


undoes

by doozerdoodles



Series: undid: undoes: undone [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adoribull - Freeform, Canon Divergent Sort of, Canon Futzed, Canon Gay Relationship, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Multi, References to Voyeurism, Slow Burn, Time Travel Fix-It, canon compliant sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-04-09 14:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4352399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doozerdoodles/pseuds/doozerdoodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Iron Bull's death in battle, a distraught and obsessed Dorian revisits the magic he pioneered with his mentor Gereon Alexius. His spell successful, Dorian now must struggle to relive his time with the Inquisition without changing events too drastically, while winning the Iron Bull's affections again- not that he can fathom how he managed to in the first place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Back to the Start

“Is that the best you’ve got?” Evelyn Trevelyan demanded, striding past Dorian from the diminishing green light of a magically fueled vortex through time. They stood in the great stone hall at Redcliff castle: Alexius, crumpled to his knees, positively hale in comparison to the last Dorian had seen of him; Felix behind him, resigned but not angry. Alive.

Not the morning of their battle with Corypheus. Not even close.

“You’ve won,” Alexius stated, grinding the words out bitterly, “there is no point extending this… charade.”

Felix went to his father’s side. Dorian watched, and felt his heart beat so hard it hurt his chest.

“You’ll die.”

“Everyone dies.”

_Sweet Maker, what have I done?_ Dorian couldn’t pull his eyes away from the pair until the Inquisitor’s scouts had approached to remove the defeated magister from the room. The chamber felt stable, no ambient magic in the air, no reedy whispers of the fade- at least no more than Dorian had become accustomed to when the rift had filled the sky. His hand went compulsively to his chest and met only with fabric. He spotted the fallen amulet, dull and cracked on the ground. It looked like a husk, a small grey repository something powerful had escaped from and left ruined.

_If it breaks, what then? There’s no way to know._

Evelyn was watching him, the wariness in her posture offset by the concern in her eyes.  _How must I have behaved? Flippantly, of course. What did I say? How is this real?_ The spell had been a success- was a success- both then and now, again- Dorian’s head hurt suddenly, a deep throbbing he guessed was the shock of the situation threatening to wear off. His spell had worked, essentially, but the amulet had somehow called to its, what, predecessor? Double? He had moved through time and not disrupted it; or the fabric of reality had acted in self preservation and compounded the threat against it into the single moment when that threat was resolved.

Only Dorian  _remembered_ . Years worth of things that hadn’t happened yet. Possibly he’d forgotten even more. The shock redoubled its efforts, and panic was thankfully shoved aside. His lips twitched, pulling up at one side into what Dorian feared was a dreadful approximation of an unconcerned smile, and he swallowed thickly to steady his voice before venturing, “Well, it… seems that’s over with.”

_Vishante kaffas_ , it was  _just beginning._

Someone cleared their throat behind them, and Dorian’s body jolted fractionally more upright. There was a tale he’d read as a boy of a brave young somniari who traveled to the fade to retrieve his younger brother’s lost soul. The mage found it, and began to escort it back to his brother’s body, but demons had followed and pretended to call out in his brother’s voice, and when he had turned around at the last moment to assure himself his brother’s soul still lingered, the demons seized upon his self doubt and both boys were lost. It was a warning to never show weakness. Now, the memory of it boiled like a fever in the pit of Dorian’s stomach, holding him from turning. What if this was his test? What if he stood in Skyhold still, and demons waited for him to doubt and turn, and look?

The noise attracted Evelyn’s attention as well, and she frowned past Dorian to the source a mere fraction of a moment before the hall’s doors were opened and it was filled the sound of marching soldiers.

“Or not,” Dorian added, mentally noting the reflex to do so. His mind was in disarray, his body primed to collapse, and he felt himself default to a posture and a tone he hadn’t had to rely upon in months, possibly a year. At least he was no longer anyone’s primary focus. The King of Fereldan was there to kick them all out of his country. It was considerably more interesting than his own unsteadiness.

In Dorian’s peripheral vision he saw Cassandra holding herself painfully upright, lovely eyes narrowed more than usual as she watched the proceedings like a hawk, unaware of his appraisal. He felt an itch at his shoulder blade, his own keen sensitivity to being watched making it known he was, and, though he wasn’t ready, Dorian turned his head further to look over his shoulder.

The Iron Bull’s attention was squarely on Dorian. He saw suspicion in the set of Bull’s jaw and the angle of his brow, if not outright hostility, but it didn’t matter, nothing else mattered, because Bull was standing there, alive. Dorian wanted to run to him, although he’d probably be met with an axe to the skull. In the moment, it seemed worth the risk, and Dorian felt himself shifting his weight when Fiona’s voice rang with jarring clarity in his ears.

“What are the conditions of this arrangement?”

“Better than what the Venatori were offering, I hope,” Dorian blurted out, forcing himself to turn back and address the gathered tableau, focusing solely on Evelyn. He didn’t doubt she would have come to her decision, the right decision, without his interjection but it was early days, still, and there wasn’t an abundance of support for the magically disposed in the room. He only hoped his words were close enough to the right ones.

How many times would he have to harbor that hope going forward?  _It might be a dream. I might be dreaming._

“The Inquisition is better than that, yes?”

Evelyn did not cut a particularly imposing figure at first glance, but the depth of watchfulness and understanding in her eyes spoke volumes, and the people that were closest to her would come to know that particular tilt of her chin exceedingly well. It meant further counsel would be graciously accepted and disregarded, in turn.

“I know you are a mage, but consider how these rebels have acted. They must be conscripted, not coddled.” Bull’s eyepatch was facing the room as he listened to Cassandra; the curve of his mouth and crease of his cheek gave away nothing of his thoughts. Dorian gritted his teeth and fought to look composed, nonchalant if he could manage. It wasn’t easy. It actually might have been impossible. His fingertips itched to trace the bridge of Bull’s nose, up along his brow to the sweep of his horns. To replace the last memory he had of doing so, sunk to his knees on a dusty battlefield.

Dorian _ached._

The rest of the declarations went quickly, neither Cassandra nor Bull nor, come to it, King Alistair seeming especially pleased, though the latter seemed to experienced some relief, at least, as the Inquisitor and her group left the hall.

“Herald,” Cassandra began, keeping stride with Evelyn, and Dorian nearly tripped over himself. Of course, Herald, not Inquisitor. Evelyn wouldn’t be named Inquisitor until after they had arrived at Skyhold.

“Are you going to be ill?”

For a thunderous moment, Dorian was sure his heart had stopped in his chest. He canted his head to glance upward at Bull, hiding his mouth behind the standing fold of his collar. The Qunari’s face was inscrutable, but Dorian could feel the edge of mockery in Bull’s voice. There was no warmth in it. The rumbling quality alone gave Dorian a sense of peace, though, a little part of himself going still while the rest continued its frantic efforts not to fall apart.

“Thoughtful of you to ask, but no. As soon as we’re out of this backwater city and the smell of wet dog has abated, I shall be right as rain.”  _Maker’s breath_ , Dorian thought at himself. Bull seemed unimpressed.

“You look a little green around the edges, is all.”

Only because they were going back to Haven, and Dorian couldn’t for the life of him remember how long it had been between their return from fetching the rebel mages to the catastrophic destruction that awaited them there. Dorian could barely remember to put one foot in front of the other, at the moment, although thankfully he arrived at the horse (chestnut, grey forelock, he  _remembered_ this animal) that was meant to be his before that basic motor function could get away from him.

“Oh, that’s hardly a concern, then,” he said, catching the front of the saddle with one hand and fitting his foot to the stirrup, “I look stunning in green.”

 Something flickered in Bull’s expression as Dorian hauled himself gracefully onto his mount. Dorian realized with a thrill it was surprise. Possibly also annoyance, but definitely surprise. He would never in a thousand ages have been able to catch it, not before he’d fallen madly in love with former spy. _Still one, at the moment,_ he reminded himself.

Would it be antagonistic to offer him a warm smile? Perhaps. Then a thought hit Dorian square in the sternum, one more impact after a barrage, too many in too short a time:  _What if you change too much and he never comes to love you in return?_

He couldn’t bring himself to look away from Bull, physically couldn’t bear to, but neither could he maintain a fully untroubled facade. Bull pursed his lips briefly and glanced Dorian over once, somehow both pointed and dismissive, before lumbering past him to arrive at his own massive charger. Dorian watched the play of muscle along his back and, once he was settled, the expansion of Bull’s chest with each breath.

His amatus, alive, in reach, and yet Dorian had never felt more paralyzed. Reality was settling along his limbs and in his heart like a hundred ages’ worth of sediment. He would have to navigate the tumultuous waters of the forthcoming years, adhering to a narrowly charted course only he knew of, never straying too far for the fear that, in his attempt to right one shattering cataclysm, another might take its place.

Worse still, he would have to deduce why the Iron Bull had ever felt for him in the first place (beyond the frankly glorious sex) and make it happen again.

The Herald said something to Bull that made him laugh, a short bark of sound, and Dorian’s fear was overtaken by resolve. He had willed them a second chance, broken immutable laws of nature to do it, and no matter the adversity, Dorian would not see it wasted.


	2. Running in Circles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the face of his difficulty navigating his fledgling acquaintance with an Iron Bull that doesn't know him, Dorian takes solace in the one thing no can ever take away: His inimitable gift for bitching about the weather.

As the Herald and her entourage progressed toward Haven, Dorian found himself with time to consider the reality of his situation, if not necessarily the faculties. He was exhausted, and the repercussions of his actions were enormous. Feeling isolated on horseback wasn’t the most ideal condition under which he would have liked to unpack his thoughts, but it was what he had; one week of it under his belt and roughly another five days to go.

The scouts that rode with them for the first leg of their departure from Redcliffe avoided him like the Blight, and when they peeled away to aid in organizing the Herald’s newly acquired mage army, it left Dorian with Evelyn, Cassandra, and Bull, and not one of them in a chatty mood. Bull took up guarding the rear, and Dorian rather thought he knew why, depressingly chaste though the reason might be. As they wound through the foothills the temperature began to drop, and the Frostbacks met them with snow on the ground and gusts of cold that pushed down from the peaks. Evelyn tugged lightly at her mount’s reins, and fell behind Cassandra to come apace with Dorian. He cast an expectant gaze sidelong at his fellow mage.

“Why does it feel like it’s not just been a long day, but a long year?” she asked him, and Dorian laughed, and was pleased it didn’t sound too forced.

“Time, as you’ve just seen, is a tricky business. Weaving in and out of it, one might expect to come out feeling a bit threadbare.”

“Timeworn,” Evelyn murmured, and Dorian snorted with genuine amusement.

“As you say.”

“How did you ever begin to sort that spell?”

Dorian hesitated, the answer unspooling in his mind and threatening to overwhelm, then shook his head.

“The foundation of the work is a formidable tangle of theories. I would be thrilled to share them, but I might beg off doing so until we’re warm and fed and, preferably, thoroughly drunk.”

Evelyn’s lips quirked a little and she nodded, even as Dorian convulsed in a full-bodied shiver.

"Tell me we’re close.”

“Closer than we were when we left,” Evelyn answered, voice wry with private amusement.

“I find your southern pragmatism offensive,” he told her. She laughed, enough to cause Cassandra to twist and look over her shoulder at them with barely couched disapproval.  _Ah, well,_ Dorian thought,  _she’ll come around._

Haven greeted them with a flurry of activity that swept Evelyn toward the Chantry with the team that would become her advisors. Dorian was a bit slower to dismount, not that he had any belongings to unpack and take with him, and he watched them go with some apprehension.

“Krem! Guess what we brought back.”

“Is the answer ‘a shitton of mages’, chief?”

Dorian’s hands tightened on his saddle and he ducked his head against his collar. He didn’t let himself turn to watch the exchange. Instead, he caught the attention of the young scout who’d just handed Cassandra’s steed off to the blacksmith. The hand that took his horse to be stabled was accompanied by a look that could have shamed a Pride demon, and Dorian belatedly realized that he was drawing a host of such glares. One or two hissed voices cut under the open air din of camp activity, and his stomach sank.

Right. Back to being the loathsome Tevinter. He’d almost forgot. Much like he’d almost forgotten the mingled incredulity and disgust that would greet him in varying degrees on Josephine and Cullen’s faces when he interrupted their group spat about how things had gone in Redcliffe. He went to get that part over with.

At least Evelyn seemed relieved he was there.

His second first night in Haven found him in much the same place as the true first had: tucked up into the furthest corner of the Singing Maiden with a beer he had to pretend to despise, that he had long ago developed a fondness for, trying to soak up the warmth of the room and appear unthreatening. Truly, he just wanted to sleep, but the thought of attempting it made him somehow nervous. Also, he had someone to wait for.

He caught Krem squinting at him once. When their eyes met, the younger man’s cheek twitched and he looked away. Dorian did as well in case Bull decided to investigate what had his lieutenant agitated. Dorian couldn’t remember if that was what had happened the first time; the déjà vu was pervasive.

There was a lull in the rowdiness when the Herald entered, then a surge of low conversations when she made her way without hesitation to Dorian’s table and sat across from him.

“My lady,” he greeted her, and she wrinkled her nose at him and Dorian’s heart felt a little lighter.

They talked a while, Dorian craftily ducking her more piercing questions (which were numerous, as was the Herald’s way), rerouting their conversation to magical theory and the process of tracing a spell’s working parts. After their shared experience of a nightmare future, which they skirted, neither entirely willing to address it head on, it felt wonderfully safe to delve into the subjects that had made them fast friends so quickly.

“It’s strange to think it, but I’d never met anyone from Tevinter at all until a few weeks ago,” Evelyn said, idly trailing her fingertip in the shape of a glyph on the side of her tankard, heating up her mulled wine. Dorian raised an eyebrow and smirked a little as he did the same to his stein, making the beer inside cold enough to be genuinely palatable. It was a habit it had taken him months to give up, and a few hours to remember he’d had in the first place.

“And now you’ve an abundance of delightful Tevinter acquaintances! Shame about the cult, though.”

“Right,” she laughed. “At least you and Krem balance it out a little. If both of you hail from the Imperium, the place can’t be all bad.”

“It isn’t,” Dorian said, and meant it, but finally allowed himself to look over at Bull’s table.

“Krem, is it? Not a common name, or a… real one, that I’m aware of. Short for something?”

"Cremisius,” Evelyn supplied.

“Mmn. A Tevinter ex-patriot hanging around with a Qunari mercenary? Seems unlikely, but I suppose stranger things have happened.” Evelyn shot him a mild look and folded her marked hand beneath her opposite elbow. Dorian chuckled.

“Which reminds me,” she said, sipping her drink, “if you’re a spy, I’d appreciate you being up front about it. Only one has so far, but I’ve taken to asking around just in case.”

"I’m not. I don’t think if I were there’d even be anyone left in the Imperium to send my secret missives to. Why?” Dorian asked, letting his eyebrows pull up to worry his forehead. “Seems a terribly specific inquest to throw around.”

“Well, Bull is,” Evelyn said, watching Dorian closely for his response.

“Is what?” Dorian prompted, playing the fool as well as he ever had, setting his mug down and using the excuse of their conversation to really look at Bull from across the tavern. He was slung back in the heaviest wooden chair available, relaxed, a small grin playing over his lips, attention on Varric and Dalish who seemed to be playfully arguing a point. Dorian could tell, though, from the tilt of Bull’s horns and the set of his hands where they rested that the man was _ready_ , in that moment, for anything.

“A Qunari spy. A bin- A  _Ben-Hassrath_ ,” Evelyn said, taking care to use the correct inflection. Dorian reminded himself this was new information, and after a beat turned his face to Evelyn without so much as blinking.

“A what?”

“A Ben-Hassrath.”

“A Qunari spy.”

“Yes.”

“For the  _Qun_ .”

“That is my understanding, yes,” Evelyn said, amused, but Dorian could see there was, perhaps, some residual unease at the idea.

“Oh well  _that’s-_ ” Dorian bit off whatever he might have said next and laughed, a bright peal that cut through the chatter. He lifted his tankard in a cheers gesture to the Herald.

“Tremendously well done. And he just up and volunteered this information?” Dorian asked, quaffing more deeply than perhaps he should have. Evelyn merely shrugged an affirmative. She had been nursing her drink for as long as it had taken Dorian to get through two and a half. He placed a firm limit for himself on his third. It was an easy want to fulfill, getting drunk enough that nothing would have to make sense, that nothing would hurt, but he couldn’t afford the risk involved with a bender.

“Thoughtful of him.”

“It was,” Evelyn agreed.

“I don’t mean to sound surprised,” Dorian said, idly tracing the mabari stamped into his mug with a fingertip. “It’s not like I didn’t get some idea of his character in-” He allowed himself to stumble. It was still a nightmare that visited sometimes, the memory of Bull falling, red crystals shattering across the flagstone like droplets of blood.

“In the future,” Evelyn finished for him. Dorian nodded.

“That future will not come to pass,” she murmured, a silverite edge to every consonant. Dorian would have believed her even if he hadn’t known it to be true.

They talked until Sera interrupted with a horn of something that smelled like sweet vinegar, and Dorian bowed out. Sera didn’t spare him a backward glance, but Evelyn managed to flash a pleading look before Dorian was out the door.

The Herald would survive the night without him.

Haven was dark outside the tavern.  A few buildings were cast in gold by the bonfires that dotted the camp, but every building was limned in pale green light from the breach. Dorian shivered and watched it churn silently in the sky, overtaken by a sudden, biting loneliness, when the tavern door knocked open behind him, light and noise spilling briefly out, then shut again leaving only the sound of heavy footsteps in the snow.

“Hey, ‘Vint.”

The breath in Dorian’s lungs shot out of him in a rush. He steadied himself a moment before turning to face Bull in the quiet of the small hours.

“For the love of- Yes?” Dorian asked, twisting his wanting to annoyance, anything to hide how dearly their proximity was costing him.

“Looks like the boss has taken a shine to you.”

“Is that a problem?”

Bull tipped his head faintly to one side in lieu of shrugging. “Don’t know yet. So far, so good. Seems like you got her out of a tight spot back in Redcliffe.”

“It was a joint effort. Is this going to be a warning of some kind? I quite assure you, you can dispense with the formality and assume it’s taken as read. Only I’m quite exhausted.”

Bull snorted softly and Dorian’s eyes stung.  _Against the cold_ , he told himself,  _they could be stinging against the cold._

“Yeah, it’s a warning. When the Herald takes a shine to people, they tend to wind up tagging along on her excursions. You might want to spend the next few days getting some more practical gear together.”

This was Bull sizing Dorian up, he knew. It was friendly enough advice, but it  _was_ , also, a message: that Bull was measuring Dorian, that he would be watching, that they would probably be traveling together where he would continue to do both of those things. Affection flared in Dorian’s chest, and he just managed to angle an eyebrow at Bull to offset the smile that broke over his face, keeping it sardonic, not allowing it to approach  _fond_ .

“If your trousers are any indication of the quality of practical gear to be found here, I’d rather endure the hardship of impracticality, thanks all the same.”

He could see Bull’s brow lift, backlit though he was against the bonfire before the Chantry doors and otherwise shadowed by the overhang of the tavern.

“Hey, these are quality.”

“They are of  _a_ quality,” Dorian sniffed severely, “but not any positive ones, I assure you. Good night, the Iron Bull.” If adding the definite article came across as sarcastic, so much the better, Dorian thought. He bowed his head briefly and started away, though not so quickly that he missed Bull answer, “Be seeing you, ‘Vint.”

Which he did the next morning, and in the evening at the Maiden, and the following day by the practice yard and then in the tavern again, where almost everyone seemed to congregate eventually. Occasionally the Herald would find Dorian during the day and they would talk, of Tevinter or the breach or more mundane topics such as the best materials from which to craft a staff to carry into combat, as opposed to one that looked nice and was nonthreatening to Templars both former and current. They discussed the training of the rebel mages, and how best to focus their magic to bolster the mark and seal the breach. Evelyn was a brilliant mind and a talented mage, a young woman in an impossible situation. She was curious about his magic not because she was suspicious, Dorian knew now, but because the Circle had stifled her ability to learn the selvages of her power, a limitation she could no longer accept. They were invariably interrupted and she would be off to deal with the next matter, aid the next companion or answer the next call, leaving Dorian to wrack his brain for a way he could prepare them for Haven’s devastation without giving away the truth.

He couldn’t come up with anything. He began instead to compose a letter to Felix, which seemed roughly as daunting a task and was terribly slow going.

Dorian’s first trip out with the Herald was, he realized grimly, going to be a revisiting of That Time We Took A Holiday In A Corpse Infested Marsh (which was not to be confused with the Time We Took A Holiday In A Corpse Infested Lake) And Made Friends With Some Avvar. It was an easy enough road south, though the air grew thicker and colder as they drew near to the boggy lands of the Fallow Mire.

“But it doesn’t actually  _say_ that on the  _map,_ does it? Who in their right mind would bother attempting to settle on land in a place called the  _Fallow Mire_ , it’s madness.”

Dorian dismounted, landing with an audible squelch and visible grimace as Evelyn, Bull, and Varric followed suit.

“You gotta hand it to Fereldans, Sparkler. They’re a tenacious, hardy, straightforward bunch.”

“Straightforward, or lacking in imagination?”

“Imagination’s overrated,” Bull interjected, and Dorian shot him a flat look.

“Says the _spy,_ ” Dorian replied archly.

“There are fires burning in the bog,” Evelyn said, frowning worriedly through the gloom. “Well. At least there will be places to warm yourself, Dorian.”

“Is this optimism? Is that what this is?” Dorian asked. “Because if so, I don’t like it.”

“Come on,” Varric sighed, “let’s get the run down from my favorite freckled scout, and then you can go back to telling us about all the things you don’t like, Sparkler.”

There was no shortage of potential complaints from Dorian, even stretched out over two days.

In addition to the swarms of pungent undead that would appear at the slightest disturbance of the ubiquitous swamp water, the piles of burning plague corpses, and the intermittent beacon lighting rituals which summoned a cadre of demons with veilfire, Bull seemed quite happy to ignore Dorian utterly between scrapes. He pestered Varric about his preferred descriptors were he to be immortalized in one of the dwarf’s trashy novellas, he gave Evelyn salient advice, he even managed to wedge in a few truly awful puns that Dorian groaned at, rolling his eyes and turning his head to hide his smile from the group- but that was all. How long had it taken for them to fall into a rapport, even a combative one? It had seemed like every other word from Bull’s mouth had been aimed at inciting Dorian to riot for a long while before anything came of it, but Dorian couldn’t for the life of him remember this silence.

He became increasingly agitated, which didn’t surprise anyone given their location, but would have if they’d known its true source.

They were at veilfire beacon number  _whatever_ , skeletons shambling from the bog, terror demons leaping from the ground with unholy shrieks, when one erupted close enough to knock Varric back into a rock wall and Bull down to the sodden earth, onto his favored leg. Everything that had been winding up inside Dorian abruptly snapped loose, and he slammed the end of his staff into the ground to send thick ropes of lightning through it, beneath and around and past Bull, to arc up around the demons like a cage which filled itself with vicious crackling light.  Evelyn was fast on Dorian’s heels, blurring across the mound and calling a thick shock of lighting directly from the sky and into both of the spindly green horrors. They lit up, silhouettes against the gloom, then splintered and dissolved. The mire was suddenly quiet, the only sounds their rasping breaths and the dull  _thut_ of natural lightning striking marshy ground elsewhere.

 

Evelyn and Bull were watching Dorian with rounder eyes than he typically expected after a magical display, despite his immense talent and impeccable form.

“You’re teaching me that,” Evelyn said decisively, holding an arm out for Bull to take though the warrior had to weigh four times what she did, even fully armored and sopping wet. He humored her, hefting himself up mostly with his other arm, eye never leaving Dorian.

“As the lady wishes. Now may we please press on? When I turn my back to the Fallow Mire I want it to be for the last time, and that moment cannot come quickly enough.”

“Give my spleen a minute to get back into place,” Varric muttered.

The battle with the jumped up Avvar brat went better, certainly faster than Dorian’s recollection had him anticipating. Evey was a ghost, an ethereal white blur pulling daggers of ice from the air itself, conjuring it in crushing bursts from all sides. Varric made use of the ruins, finding high ground long enough to deliver a handful of devastating shots before taking off for a new position, and Bull met the Avvar swing for swing, leaving Dorian’s heart in his throat.

It had taken some months to see past the distasteful bluntness of the Iron Bull and instead see finesse, but seen it Dorian had. The attention to the battlefield, the careful holding and shifting of his weight, his muscles- his hands-

Dorian called up a barrier around Bull, feinted around a pillar, and drew up a glyph in the air before him. The timing was flawless, the Avvar’s swing halted by the barrage as Bull’s hammer came down hard, decisively ending the fight.

Evelyn murmured an approving word as she made for the door at the back of the ruined hall, something about  _working together_ , and Dorian thoughtlessly shot Bull a pleased grin. They  _did_ work well together. It had been a particular point of pride on Dorian’s part for some time, and then a potent source of pain and self loathing for some time after that.

Bull squinted at him, and the corner of Dorian’s smile slipped. He reached up to smooth the curl of his moustache with his thumb and bowed deeply, a showman’s bow, then swept himself up and followed after Evelyn.

Damn everything to the void.  _Everything_ .

The trek back to Haven was excruciating, for all that the trip had been a success, and marked the beginning of several weeks’ misery. Dorian’s life became one of avoidance; he avoided Bull when they weren’t called afield together; he avoided spit, and members of the Chantry, and the rough shoulder or two that would carelessly crash into his own if he didn’t pay attention and give certain soldiers a wide enough berth.

He avoided the full truth, in the letter he was painstakingly constructing to his friend whose time was running out.

_My dearest Felix,_

_I write to you from winter’s eternal bower in the Frostbacks, missing the North with every stroke of my pen. I do not doubt my eventual return, though I wonder at the circumstances under which I will take that journey. I will stay with this Inquisition, and follow the Herald of Andraste, for as long it and she may make use of my skills. You’d quite like her. ~~I don’t want you to die.~~_

_I have not seen your father but I know he is being well kept. ~~A Tevinter behind bars is less deserving of ire than one walking freely amongst the ranks, it seems.~~ I have not decided what to say to him when we do eventually, inevitably speak. There is too much to choose from. Perhaps it should all simply go unsaid. I fear you’d disagree._

_There are so many things I wish we could talk about, that we did not have time for when you were here. ~~That now we never will.~~  Forgive me if this all seems maudlin, I only wish to be as straightforward as I am capable of._

_You are and have always been a true friend. I know I have not been such a one in kind, and dearly wish I could boast otherwise. ~~I also wish I could see the look on your face when I tell you I’ve fallen for a qunari, primarily because I assume the overriding emotion would be delight.~~_

_Please take every care you may with your health. Time is a strange thing, the way it stretches interminably and is then so suddenly past. I hope for letters from you, my friend, and coming from Tevinter all the way to the barbarous south takes some time indeed._

He had to write it out four times and burn the first three attempts before braving an interaction with Josephine to ask it be sent with all haste. She was exceedingly polite about it, and didn’t even lift an eyebrow to mock him for the wax seal on the paper. Leliana would have the letter’s contents before it sent, Dorian had no doubt.

He slept poorly once the letter was out of his hands.

Journeying to the Storm Coast didn’t particularly help. The ride was arduous, given Bull’s barely lessened ambivalence toward Dorian and Blackwall’s outright mistrust and dislike. Dorian wished he were as petty as he had once been, just to wipe the smug look he imagined existed under all that beard right off Blackwall’s face. Dorian wasn’t, though, and so he limited himself to the occasional pointed barb about Wardens and their deleterious pasts. It was evidence of Wardens they were going to collect, so quite a few opportunities presented themselves.

When they finally reached Scout Harding and the Inquisition camp, the rain was falling in earnest if uneven sheets, and the Waking Sea taunted Dorian even from high upon the cliffs, green and choppy and ice cold. He grimaced, pushing down still-vivid memories of seasickness and homesickness and everything else he had carried with him on that voyage.

“At least it’s not a swamp,” Bull said, coming to stand beside Dorian and survey the coastline beneath them.

"Ah,” Dorian sighed expansively, “but my primary grievances, you will recall, were how-”

“Cold and wet,” Bull muttered.

“-precisely it was, and this?” Dorian lifted one hand in a flourish. Bull looked from the hand to the sky, and then down to the grass where it sprouted determinedly from the sandy earth. He seemed to be fighting an internal battle.

“Little chilly.”

 “And also?” Dorian pressed. The corner of Bull’s nose crinkled upward as he tilted his face into the rain. Dorian’s stomach twisted into several elaborate knots.

“Wet.”

“Thank you,” Dorian said. “More than enough to warrant complaining.” Bull groaned and heaved himself away from the cliffside, back down the half trodden path toward the camp.

“Well, better hike up your skirt, mage boy,” he rumbled over his shoulder. Dorian’s posture stiffened and his mouth dropped a little open, though he maintained a facade of indignation even against the sudden wild pounding of his heart in his ears.

“I am not wearing a skirt.”

Bull waved him off without looking back.

“You trip on that bustling- whatever, don't come crying to me.”

Dorian had never in his life been so pleased to be mocked. It was almost difficult to keep up the expected litany of complaints afterward, though he persevered.  When they found the murdered scouts in the ramshackle hut on the bluff, he stopped. The evidence of Grey Wardens they discovered afterward mollified Blackwall, and Dorian was too occupied trying to remember everything he’d dug up on the Blades of Hessarian so many years back to be particularly dedicated to giving Bull a hard time.

That was all right, though. It could wait. They had a long way to go, and Dorian needed to pace himself, and also stay away from liquor in the mean time. Bottles of it always did turn up in the oddest places.

Bull’s head tilted toward the downward slope of the latest cliff they’d traversed a heartbeat before the shattering cry of a dragon split the air.

“Oh, no,” Dorian said, but Bull and Evelyn were already moving hurriedly to the cliffside. Blackwall looked as trepidatious as Dorian felt.

“Oh,” Bull said, voice gruff with admiration, “oh,  _man_ , look at that. That’s badass.”

On the beach, a giant warred with a distinctly marked high dragon. Dorian had seen it before. Unable to resist, he took up the space between the Herald and the Iron Bull and said, “She’s a Vinsomer, look. See the markings?”

Bull almost glanced over at Dorian, but couldn’t bring himself to look away from the epic struggle playing out on the sand.

“A  _Vinsomer_ , huh?” He nearly purred the name. Dorian did not let himself roll his eyes.  _Or_ shiver. Not visibly, anyway.

“See her throat?” Through the mist off the sea, a glowing blue flush seemed to be spreading down the dragon’s neck. The blue brightened, coalesced in her jaw, and she spewed forth a torrent of wild, white-hot lightning. It sent the giant sprawling, and the beast spasmed where it lay, while quick whispers of white light licked along the shoreline.

“.....Boss,” Bull said, and Evelyn immediately answered, “ _No._ ”

For the rest of trip, when they weren't actively engaged in combat, Bull would gaze wistfully out to sea in the direction the Vinsomer had taken its leave. Once they were on the road back to Haven, the subject of proper tack, ordnance, and vitaar for dealing with a dragon of the Vinsomer’s size and ability became Bull’s favorite. If it wasn’t such a dangerous damn hobby to pick up, Dorian might have been more amused.

“I’m sure you’ll get a chance to chase the thing down eventually, Iron Bull. I doubt anyone will beat you to it. No one would be crazy enough.”

“Come on, ‘Vint, don’t tell me you can’t appreciate the grandeur of taking on a lightning-spewing high dragon.”

“If it’s mounted on the wall at a decadent soiree, perhaps. Otherwise, absolutely not.”

“Suit yourself. Leave the glory to the rest of us. You’ll need something interesting to gossip about at those fancy parties, after all.”

“If you’re so eager to get your preparations underway, I can start firing lightning bolts at you at random intervals.

“Ah, there’s that Tevinter hospitality.”

“I live to serve. Oh, wait- no, I don’t, since I wasn’t born under the Qun.”

The fire popped in the silence between them, Dorian startled with himself and the Iron Bull placid, but _carefully_ so. Evelyn glanced between them, gauging the tension, measuring how to break it, when Bull chuckled.

“Everybody serves somebody.”

Dorian winced against a sudden onslaught of memories, things he could not prevent but wished to, and several he did not. He tugged his robes closer around his shoulders, gave a terse good night, and retreated. It was graceless, perhaps, but swift, and Dorian wrapped himself in what passed for a bedroll as tightly as he could, and stifled hitched breaths and tears of mourning against the coarse fabric until he passed into a dreamless exhaustion that served for sleep.

To his credit, Bull continued on as blithely as ever in the following days, Dorian’s barb a the fireside dismissed if not forgotten. Blackwall was perfectly happy to keep his focus on the Herald, and Evelyn remained her quiet, wry self, more given to listening and observing than leading the conversation. She asked many questions, and her companions filled the journey with stories as they answered them without quite realizing it.

When they arrived at Haven and gave their horses up, they were greeted by Cullen, Cassandra, and, in a sight that warmed Dorian to his very core, Solas and Vivienne standing side by side, both looking determined to ignore the other.

“Herald.” Cullen walked forward to greet them, gait stiff with formality or some other tension. Dorian noticed the way Blackwall’s gaze flicked over the younger- was Cullen younger? Of course. Perhaps not by much, though- soldier, the way Evelyn’s posture pricked ever so slightly straighter; because Cullen was a former Templar or because he was unreasonably handsome, Dorian couldn’t rightly say. Probably both. Eventually, at least, it would be primarily the latter.

“Sorry to bombard you straight away, but-”

“The mages are as prepared as they can be,” Cassandra stated. “Solas and Vivienne both agree. We are ready to move on the breach when you are.”

The words settled in the pit of Dorian’s stomach like a physical weight. He looked around Haven, some faces more familiar than others. Dozens he had never bothered to know. It was mid afternoon. He took a moment to burn the image into his memory, even if he had no particular love for the place. It felt important.

“All right,” Evelyn was saying, “I trust your assessment. There’s nothing to be gained by waiting. Tomorrow.”

Dorian barely heard the strangled noise he made, but everyone else seemed to, as they were all suddenly watching him. None of the gazes were especially friendly.

"Are we- certain?” he managed. “Have we not discovered anything more of what’s become of the Templars?”

“They are fled, and even were we to approach them now, it would be of no use.” Cassandra hid any regret she might have felt well, and Cullen gave away his own well-couched dismay with nothing more than a shift of his weight.

“Yes, but-”

“I’m worried too,” Evelyn said, reaching out to rest her fingertips against Dorian’s elbow. “About everything. How it will go. But if Solas and Vivienne say we are ready, I believe we must act. Putting it off will only allow the troubles the breach is causing to spread.”

 "...Of course. You’re right,” Dorian said, making his face affect contrition, modulating his voice to sound tired and regretful, while a numb dread spread through him.

 “Go sleep,” Evelyn told him, and then was beside Cullen, the rest of her counsel in their wake, traipsing up the snowy walk toward the Chantry. Dorian stood silent for a moment, until the Iron Bull stepped up beside him.

 “What are you thinking?”

 “Thinking?” Dorian replied. “Nothing. Only I have an... unwelcome feeling.” Bull grunted, which Dorian took as encouragement to continue.

 “This Elder One was counting on Alexius to deliver him the mages. He was denied. So where else might he turn, then, to acquire an army? Particularly one-”

 “Suited to fighting mages, right,” Bull muttered. Dorian caught himself watching Bull’s profile and jerked his eyes down. He almost scrubbed a hand over his face. The physical urge to turn into Bull’s bulk, press his face against the indent of Bull’s shoulder and hook his fingers over the ridge of Bull’s belt, breathe him in and steal his warmth, was overwhelming. Once the instinct was curbed, Dorian felt hollow.

“But no matter. Tomorrow should be momentous, and I would quite like to be awake for it. Good night, Iron Bull.”

Dorian met Bull’s eyes as he spoke, hesitating a moment too long, then gathered himself and turned away to find his cot in the building near the apothecary. It took another several hours before his bone weariness outweighed his dread and Dorian actually slept. The morning came swiftly, and with more fanfare than he would have liked. Before the sun was at its highest point, they were organized in marching order, and he watched the ranks of mages and soldiers follow the Herald of Andraste up the mountain path to what had been the Temple of Sacred Ashes. He watched the breach as it fluxed and burst and then was gone.

Dorian couldn’t quite bring himself to cheer for it.

Evelyn returned looking tired but pleased, and painfully young. Congratulations were passed around alongside libations, and the village was overtaken by the spirit of celebration. Dorian’s gaze kept straying to the mountains, and an impossible hope-  _Maybe something’s already different. Maybe they won’t come._ \- kindled in his mind.

Then the bells rang out, and that hope turned to ashes in Dorian’s heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still reading, my sincerest thanks. Fist fic out and figuring out things like pacing is still... that's still happening. Things will move faster and Dorian will be an increasingly bigger mess moving forward, though, so that should be fun! Please don't leave me. 
> 
> I can't remember or find exactly when Bull starts calling the Inquisitor Boss, so there may be an inaccuracy, but given travel distances they've probably been a crew for 2 months by the time they hit the Storm Coast in this chapter, longer for Bull as he was recruited earlier, so I took the liberty.


	3. Come Up to Meet You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cole, Skyhold, Crestwood, tiny variations, and increasing complications that are somewhat exacerbated by Dorian's magic fingers.

A preternatural stillness had settled over the snowy basin where the remnants of the Inquisition and former residents of Haven had taken shelter. The sky was a strange hue of peach, such that looking straight up gave no indication as to whether it was early morning or late afternoon. There were wispy, rippling clouds in the sky. They did not move.

Dorian watched them from his place tucked against a cart someone had dragged along and left beside a hastily erected tent. He sat in the snow, robes tucked tight around him, and didn’t feel the cold.

“You don’t look worried,” Bull said, sounding only faintly puzzled himself, as he went to sling himself down beside Dorian, offering him a large flask. Dorian waved it off.

“I’m not, especially. Hindsight. Or foresight, I suppose. Sight of a kind, anyway.”

“That’s real cold, Dorian,” Bull rumbled, angling a look at him that put his eye patch into view, and Dorian laughed a little.

“You know that wasn’t what I meant.”

“Yeah, I know.”

They fell into companionable silence. Bull tilted his head back, enough that his horns wouldn’t gouge the tent, to shift his attention to the sky.

“You know what this reminds me of?”

“Hmmn,” Dorian intoned, taking his time to feign contemplation, “no. What?”

Bull’s fingers brushed along Dorian’s shoulder, then dropped to settle on his knee. Dorian smiled to himself and coyly dropped his gaze from the winter sky to Bull’s hand. It was filthy. Dorian’s trousers were smudged with ash and dirt and a few smears of rapidly browning red.

“The day you found me.”

The cold was suddenly biting, and Dorian saw his own hands were torn and bloodied where they folded over his biceps. He felt himself about to turn, even knowing now it was a nightmare, knowing the face he was turning toward would be that of a corpse. Such was the way of nightmares: Recognizing them as such did not guarantee control over them.

Long fingers wrapped suddenly around his elbow and pulled him to face away from Bull, and Dorian barely caught a flash of pale yellow and blue, like sunlight lancing across a clear sky, along with a voice in his ear crying out _Don’t._

Dorian jolted back to himself, nearly dropping the bottle of wine cradled in his lap. The mountains were dark, the sun no longer visible above them, but the snow reflected what light was left and gave the late afternoon a strange glow. He shivered, shoulders bucking against the stack of supplies he’d nodded off against, and scrubbed a hand over his face, barely mindful of his mustache. His stomach roiled as much from the physical toll of the past two days as from the wine and the dream. He blinked hard, willing away the creeping tendrils of sorrow and desperation that lingered in his mind, and focused on what he could see of the camp from his cloistered spot.

It was quiet, but hardly still. People seemed aimless, even those with tasks to perform. They were lost, the lot of them, shaken by the loss of their haven and their herald and, for some, their faith. Dorian squinted at the sky, slate blue bruising toward evening black, and swished the bottle in his hand to test its fullness. There was a swallow left. He took it. _Well, their faith will be restored and doubled shortly_ , he figured. _Only thing to do is wait._

He moved to discard the bottle and found himself eye to eye with the brim of Cole’s hat, the gangly spirit crouched before him like a collapsed marionette. Dorian held utterly still, eyes round with a surprise he didn’t bother masking, and Cole tipped his face enough that the brim rose and an equally round cornflower iris met Dorian’s gaze, unwavering.

“Er,” Dorian said.

“You were here before,” Cole said. Dorian didn’t reply immediately, caught off guard by the directness of the statement. Usually there was a good deal more alliterative build up before Cole so much as alluded to the point.

“...Well,” Dorian answered slowly, “sort of.”

“You’re here now, and you remember now, but it’s different. You’re different. You know me. Know what I am.”

“Yes,” Dorian said, “or, I know what you are at the moment. Cole, you musn’t pry into my head. It’s very important. Do you understand?”

“Winding, wending, wishing for wisdom he hoped he’d earned, wanting to- help!” Cole said, brightening. “Like me! I want to help. They are hurting. So are you, but it’s… old hurt, under the new, but current. How can it be?”

Dorian glanced regretfully at the empty bottle before sighing deeply and shifting all of his focus to Cole. He leaned forward onto his knees so their eyes were level, and Dorian could keep his voice very low.

“I’ll manage. It’s very important that no one know any of the things you might see in my head, and I’d truly rather you didn’t look to begin with.”

“The hurt is loud. I heard it, because I was listening, but I didn’t _mean_ to listen. I’m sorry, Dorian.”

“It’s fine,” Dorian reassured him, smile wan.

“I could make you forget,” Cole offered, in much the same way someone might offer a blanket or a cup of tea. The pressures of the nearly three months since Dorian had traveled from Skyhold to Redcliffe had been maddening. Dorian was worn raw in a way he hadn’t been since he’d sold his birthright. He was tired of juggling his own masks, he was scared of what he had done, and he was as lonely as he had ever been. Cole was not a demon, but Dorian had heard worse bids from a few.

 “No,” he murmured. “No, it is vital that I remember. Even if it may hurt.”

Cole nodded, though he still seemed confused and off-put by Dorian’s presence. _In that way_ , Dorian thought, _you’ll fit right in._ Cole suddenly turned his head, and most of his body was hidden by the curve of his hat.

“He worsens, withers, wants to make amends. I have to go,” Cole said, and vanished. Dorian didn’t know who Cole meant. A number of the walking wounded would succumb to cold or injury before they moved out for Skyhold. He curled over himself, forehead against his knees, and summoned enough magic to warm himself so standing wasn’t an agony of stiff, cold muscles unknotting.

Dorian moved through the camp like a ghost, his fellow survivors far too absorbed with their own shock to pay him any notice, until he came to the largest fire, around which the Herald’s friends had gathered looking varying degrees of miserable and worn. The Iron Bull stood a ways back from the thick of the conversation (which looked to become an argument soon), arms folded, observant. His gaze drifted up to land on Dorian, and though he didn’t do anything so obvious as beckon him over or incline his head, the brow above his good eye hitched slightly and tellingly upward. Dorian all but skulked closer, tucking his arms around himself and stopping nearer to the fire. The discussion seemed to be about the logistics of mounting a search party. No one was opposed, but every detail became a point of contention. Eventually a few participants broke away, in frustration or disgust, and others turned to scouts or soldiers with pressing questions or needs. Bull waited a few moments, then made his way to stand near Dorian, facing the fire.

“Have a good nap?” he asked.

“No,” Dorian replied sharply. They were both quiet, measuring the quality of the silence, weighing it, Dorian thought, against the horror of what had driven them into the mountains. It was a lot to shrug off, skilled though they both were in the art.

“Are you hurt?”

“What?” Dorian craned his neck to meet Bull’s inquisitive glance.

“Are you hurt,” he repeated, enunciating carefully.

“No. No, I’m perfectly unharmed.” Dorian didn’t bother to bring up the bandage wrapped around Bull’s forearm, or the smattering of small burns or scrapes across his uncovered shoulder. “Your Chargers?”

“They’re good. Two or three broken bones, nothing that won’t travel.” Dorian nodded and shrugged closer to the fire.

 _You know what this reminds me of?_ He suppressed a shiver.

“Heard something interesting from my lieutenant.”

“Dirty joke? The best ones _are_ Tevene, but something is invariably lost in the translation,” Dorian said, staring fixedly at the flames.

“Nah, Krem’s snappy with a come back, and a decent storyteller, but he doesn’t have a flare for the dirty stuff.”

“Well,” Dorian said, “nobody’s perfect. Though the rare individual comes remarkably close. I’m referring to myself,” he added, and Bull snorted.

“Yeah, I picked up on that. No, the thing is, I didn’t see Krem until we were making our final push out of Haven through those tunnels. Not that I wanted my boys taking point with us and Trevelyan out front, necessarily, but still- weird that I wouldn’t see them at least by the gates, right?”

_The clanging of the bells was the first layer of cacophony. Frightened cries were the second, followed almost immediately by the rough sounds of armor being donned and weapons readied, as the Inquisition’s gathered forces rushed toward the lake shore and the trebuchets. Dorian had taken three running steps to follow Evelyn then whipped around, scanning the flood of panicked faces until the one he wanted was in his sights._

_“Aclassi!”_

_Krem came up short, too confused to be annoyed, as Dorian dodged his way through the crowd to catch his fellow Tevinter by the bicep._

_“Get the civilians into the Chantry.’_

_“What?!”_

_“Get the non-combatants into the Chantry,” Dorian yelled, raising his voice above the increasing din. “The force coming down that mountain is monstrous and we don’t what they’ve brought with them. It’s the only damned building with actual walls that we have!”_

_“You-”_

_“No._ You. _Bull is with the Herald, the others are already heading for the fight, and not one person here will trust or listen to me. They know the Chargers, though. They like you, they’ll listen to you. Clear the outer buildings, get everyone to a defensible position. There are two stories of thick stone cellars under that building. Let’s make use of them.” Krem regarded Dorian narrowly, but nodded, his frown not one of displeasure so much as consideration._

_“Go,” Dorian said, and Krem turned sharply, shouting for Skinner and Stitches. Dorian pulled his staff from his back and ran for the gates._

“Herding survivors, weren’t they?” Dorian asked blithely.

“Apparently. Worked out, too. More survivors to herd than I would have expected, given how quickly everything went down.”

“Well done, Chargers.”

Bull hummed noncommittally, but didn’t press. His presence was a comfort, a slight warmth buffeting the wind on that side. If they stood any nearer, Dorian would have been in real danger of leaning into him. The cold on Dorian’s unguarded right seemed like an intentional push to do so.

“How’s your-” Dorian began, then stopped himself and swallowed the next word. Bull tilted his horns a little, curious.

“I- No, I meant- I’m sorry, I think I’m sobering up,” Dorian said, berating himself internally. He’d almost asked after the Qunari’s void taken _knee_. “Are you going to take a party out?”

“Back down the mountain?” Bull rumbled, taking quick but careful note of Dorian’s demeanor, satisfied by whatever he seemed to find. Then he looked at the sky.

“Yeah. Would rather not head out this late, visibility isn't getting any better, but,” he sighed expansively, drawing the vowel out, “it was pretty lousy to begin with. This is as secure a location as we’re going to find without who knows how many more days of walking, so now’s the time to go.”

“I”ll accompany you, if you like,” Dorian said, grateful for the rasp in his voice. It tempered the eagerness somewhat. He cleared his throat.

“If I like?” Bull echoed, the query brief, and so far from the Iron Bull’s brand of _salacious_ it didn’t even register. Or shouldn’t have. Dorian flustered instantly.

“ _Vishante kaffas_ , I’m offering assistance!”

“Yeah,” Bull said slowly, mouth curling handsomely upward at each corner, “I picked up on that. Tell you what, ‘Vint. Don’t go anywhere. I’m going to round up our party.”

“By all means, take your time,” Dorian huffed, hunching his shoulders a little to push his collar up higher around his ears. Bull moved off after giving Dorian a onceover, and Dorian concentrated on digging his heels into the snow to keep himself from watching the warrior walk away.

Or from going alone to the mouth of their little basin, where Evelyn would eventually appear and collapse. He spotted Cullen snapping a tent flap back and stomping out into the snow, followed closely by a stern looking Cassandra. They were nearer the ridge anyway, as they ought to have been. Dorian noticed Blackwall was also in tow, though with a healthy distance between himself and the Commander. If Dorian hadn’t known the man, he would not perceived the agitation tensing his frame. Dorian knew he certainly hadn’t spotted it the first time. He hadn’t given the _warden_ much consideration at all, at the start.

Bull reappeared with Skinner, Stitches, Rocky, and Krem, as well as three determined looking Inquisition scouts. Dorian lifted a hand and Bull stopped, angling a look at it until Dorian used it to gesture to the exchange taking place on the slope.

“I think… hold a moment,” Dorian said. Skinner bristled silently but neither made a comment nor stabbed him.

“If you’re waiting for them to make up their minds about something, you’ll be here a long time,” Bull said. “We’re going.”

“Just wait,” Dorian snapped, squinting at the dark line of the snow where it crested, juxtaposed against the dark clouds rolling across the sky beyond.

There was an abrupt shift, Cullen shouting something and breaking away from the group. It sparked more movement, and people looked up from their vigilantly tended fires and friends.

“It’s her,” Dorian sighed, relief washing through him, leaving him almost dizzy.

“Chief.” Krem sounded unsure but deeply hopeful. Bull nodded in reply.

“Stitches, go with him.”

The two Chargers took off at a jog to assess the commotion. The camp had stopped, everyone who could stand doing so, faces turned to the ridge with naked hope showing on every one. How unsettling that must have been for Evelyn, Dorian thought. How crushing a weight.

He realized belatedly that Bull was staring at him, hard and searching, and Dorian met it unflinchingly.

“You a believer?”

“It hardly matters. Belief or no, she survived. People will ascribe their own meaning.”

“What do you want, Dorian?” It was a startling question, not because Bull wasn’t usually straightforward, but he typically let people unwittingly give away that sort of information. Dorian had watched him do it a thousand times before he’d caught on. Bull didn’t say _Why are you here?_ , but Dorian heard the question nonetheless.

“...to right an unspeakable wrong,” Dorian answered. The quality of the silence between them had changed, the tension pulling at Dorian’s chest like something hooked beneath his breastbone. He couldn't guess the Iron Bull’s thoughts, only knew the memories of his hands and his mouth and his heartbeat, his voice crooning _Moment I saw you I knew I wanted to see you just like this_ against Dorian’s ear, weren’t shared. Didn’t exist. Not yet.

“Sparkler, we need you!”

Evelyn would be conscious, then, if not very much and not for long, and Dorian went as summoned, shoving all other thoughts aside save for _At least I won’t have to remember to say ‘Elder One’ anymore._

The afternoon melted into evening with a flurry of events, including a rigorous if scattered interrogation that tested the limits of Dorian’s patience and self control (how expedient it would have been to give Cassandra all of the information she demanded he extrapolate from a handful of groggy, shivering words without the subsequent months of research it would require to do so); another tiresome round of circuitous arguments while the Herald remained unconscious; and, of course, a campfire singalong that did everyone a world of good except, it seemed, for Evelyn. He considered going to her, making an attempt to relieve her of some of the weight that had settled on her shoulders before she moved on to the daunting task of bringing them to Skyhold, but Solas beat him to it. Dorian watched them leave the crowd for someplace private to talk, and felt the start of a realization hit him like a hammer to his stomach.

“His thoughts, like yours; loud but unclear, touched by the Fade; layered, longing to undo what is already done. Only you can and he cannot. You both know this, yet- you both fear failing.”  It was the first Dorian had seen of Cole in hours, and the shock of his appearance nearly sent Dorian out of his skin.

“ _Venhedis_ , what did I say before?!” he demanded, any twinge of guilt at the remorse on Cole’s face overridden by Dorian’s alarm.

“...About what, Sparkler?”

Dorian was already forming a biting response to whip at the dwarf, but it died in his throat when he took in the collection of strange looks being leveled his way. He turned back to the empty air where Cole had been, realized precisely how this looked, and carefully closed his mouth and smoothed his expression before looking at Varric with all the haughty indifference he could muster, which was considerable.

He had nothing resembling an answer to give.

“If you don’t listen, what possible reward could there be in repeating myself?” he demanded, and flounced violently away from the ring of firelight, leaving a dumbstruck Varric and rudely gesturing Sera behind.

They packed up and headed north at first light, a journey of bitter winds that had no effect on the Inquisition’s moral that Dorian could see: Not with Evelyn at the fore of the caravan. By noon on the second day he stopped speaking to anyone, having grown tired of the rapidly spreading practice of replying to him with a variation of _Wait, let me write this down_. Dorian decided such concentrated ribbing was preferable to dirty looks or clumsy allusions to blood magic. That didn’t mean he had to subject himself to it willingly.

When they stopped at the crest of a treeless hill and found themselves presented with the stronghold they had been seeking, the hazing was instantly forgotten. A chorus of celebratory whoops arose, and Varric murmured a colorful hypothetical involving questionable parentage that earned him a swat from Cassandra. They regrouped their forces and pressed onward, but Dorian found himself lingering behind, wrestling with a homesickness he hadn’t anticipated. Skyhold had warped around him in the weeks before his leaving, becoming an endless gauntlet of painful reminders he couldn’t bring himself to abandon. The Skyhold they now approached would be a mess, of course, but also, perhaps, fresh.

If he let himself, he could smell the sharp clean mists that floated perpetually up from the waterfalls; the earthy stone-and-vellum scent of the nook he would stake out as his own. He wanted to go home.

The person who had made it one for him was bellowing at his men to pick up the pace. They did so with minimal insubordination, a sign of how cheered everyone was by the prospect of real shelter and, potentially, decent sleep. Bull’s eye met Dorian’s across the throng, and Dorian found himself smiling. He offered an exaggerated shrug, fanning his fingers at the appearance of a conveniently empty castle fortified by mountains on all sides, before starting to wind his way down the slope. Before he looked away, he could swear he caught a glimpse of Bull smirking to himself and shaking his head.

Two weeks slipped by without Dorian noticing. Skyhold was a demanding boon, and the influx of pilgrims and gawkers was endless. At the first sign of a lull, Cassandra and Leliana had dragged Evelyn up onto a platform and stuck a sword in her hand. Their Inquisitor thus installed, the work redoubled and everyone’s time was fully occupied with training and arranging volunteers, securing buildings and building scaffolding, and Dorian made himself a fixture in the library and a pain in requisitions’ ass. The faster he could get decent research materials, the faster he could supply their intrepid order with valuable information he already held, and dedicate his time to looking for answers to questions he hadn’t known to ask, before.

There was a slight interruption of this plan when the Inquisitor gave him the news they would be travelling to Crestwood in two days’ time.

“Oh? And what merits a visit to so illustrious sounding a local?” Dorian asked, moving a pile of absolute tripe onto a side table to make room on the shelf for anything halfway decent.

“The Champion- Hawke- says that’s where we’ll find the Warden.”

“Another Grey Warden? I do hope he’s as charming as Blackwall.”

“ _Yes_ , quite. There’s also a rift.”

“Is there!” Evelyn remained carefully unphased by Dorian’s feigned delight.

“There is.”

“A big one, I take it?”

“It’s under a lake.”

Dorian knew damned well where the blighted rift was, but he still took a moment to turn and fix her with as blisteringly nonplussed an expression as he could manage.

"You did so well in the marsh-” she began, fighting a grin.

“I don’t know why anyone likes you,” Dorian said. “I certainly don’t.”

“Wear higher boots,” she told him, smiling nothing short of impishly, before heading up to speak to Leliana.

In the end, she brought him, Bull, and their resident Grey Warden.

The weather favored them on the way to Crestwood, though things darkened noticeably as they drew close. Dorian turned his head and fixed Bull with a steady, silent stare that, once noticed, had the Qunari chuckling. The complaint was so rote it went unsaid. Which didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty else to complain about: the undead, always a favorite, and the Grey Wardens who understood as much about what was going on as nugs did the intricacies of necromancy. At least they managed to talk a young girl desperate for adventure away from making that particular leap. Blackwall didn’t seem pleased, but he didn’t speak up, either.

Three days of unholy rain and Red Templars later, and they still had Caer Bronach to tackle. Evelyn hadn’t given the word yet, but Dorian knew it was coming. They had to take the keep to reach the bloody dam.

“So we’re going to drain the lake?” Bull asked, shouldering into his harness on the morning of their fourth day, horns already dark and gleaming with rain. Dorian had to drag his attention away from them and back to the conversation at hand.

“We are going to drain the lake,” Evelyn confirmed, pulling her hood up and tossing a blue bottle to Dorian. A scout had been sent the evening prior, to have troops sent with all haste to hold the keep once it had been emptied of the bandits currently in residence.

“You know, I always thought tucking up with a good book, indoors, was the preferred activity on rainy days,” Dorian sighed. “But I suppose taking over a bandit stronghold and emptying a large body of water will do.”

“Ah, come on,” Bull said, “it’s not that big a lake.”

Only one band of templars slowed their progress en route, and the keep went easily enough. Blackwall was a ferocious guard, every strike deft, every energy spent in shielding Evelyn. His role as bodyguard somewhat bogarted, Bull was happy to play wrecking ball, charging into groups of the poor bastards and swinging away, shouldering down doors and using them to bat aside careless rogues before discarding them in a shower of splinters. Dorian kept apace, casting barriers, always, mindful every time to attempt to make them stronger, more durable, a constant test of his will and abilities. He had so much time to get stronger, to become better. He had to use it, every moment of it. If not, what was the point?

He fell into such a rhythm with Bull by the time they’d reached the tower that the skirmish had become fun. Dorian paralyzed a brutish outlaw carrying an impractically sized maul with a searing, violet blast of pure fear, and Bull charged him, shoulder crashing into the bruiser’s stomach, sending him toppling over the edge of the battlements with the force. They both winced at the distant sound of armor crashing on rocks.

“...you know, I almost feel guilty about that one,” Dorian said, spinning his staff around in an easy arc before slotting it into the leather rests across his back.

“Not the best way to go, admittedly,” Bull shrugged, wiping some blood and rust from the leather on his shoulder.

“On the upside, his mind was probably so overrun with terror that he didn’t actually feel any physical pain,” Dorian reasoned, not bothering to turn at the sound of Evelyn and Blackwall’s steps on the wet stonework as they ascended the last staircase. Bull was squinting at him with a nearly comical degree of skepticism.

“...I don’t know that that’s better.” Dorian looked mildly abashed, felt acutely the fact that he and Bull were, for the moment, alone, and self consciously reached up to thumb one side of his mustache, hoping the curl was holding. It seemed to be.

“You’re kind of scary,” Bull added, and, in the moment before their company made it into earshot, grinning just slightly, “it’s kind of hot.”

Dorian choked on nothing, hands hovering uselessly in two seemingly random places in the air in front of him, and he crossed his arms pointedly and coughed.

“For a pampered ‘Vint, I suppose?” he demanded, out of sorts and scrambling to regain his footing.

“Yeah,” Bull said, “for a ‘Vint.”

“Well,” Evelyn said, scarcely out of breath, flecked with blood but smiling, walking past the Iron Bull to look out across the hills of Crestwood. “We have a Keep!”

“That we do. A valuable strategic asset, my lady. Very well done.” Evelyn looked back to Blackwall, beaming, hair coming loose from its braid in damp, curling tendrils, and Dorian looked sharply back at Blackwell, as well.

How in the names of all the Old Gods together had Dorian not noticed this bizarre flirtation the first time round? _Surely Bull’s rain slicked pectorals weren’t so fascinating they made you oblivious to_ everything _else?_

Dorian mistakenly cast a sideways glance at said physique and felt a warmth rush through his center that left only a fierce wanting in its wake.

_Well. Hindsight._

Finding the mechanism for the dam was simple enough, and when they emerged to the smell of empty lake and the now brighter green glow emanating from a truly massive rift, the day caught up with them. At least, it caught Evelyn, who was perfectly willing to press forward but allowed herself to be talked out of it.

They found rooms in the keep, some of which had rudimentary furniture, some of which had unimpressive stockpiles of stolen goods. Blackwall was helpful enough establishing Evelyn in the driest of the chambers they came across, and chose himself to take first watch. They would await the scout’s return and in the morning, then go to close the rift. It was all well and good, save that after months of excruciating vigilance, Dorian found himself going to bed in the same room as the Iron Bull. It had been grueling, always making sure to take one watch or the other. If not, then arranging things so either he or the Bull were, at the least, _ostensibly_ asleep when the other entered the tent. It had been a great joke the first time they’d been designated to share, the fussy, standoffish magister’s son being forced into close quarters with the boorish Qunari spy. Dorian had embraced the jokes with as much invective as he could, because they gave him reason to keep the distance he needed.

Sera wasn’t there to mock them, though, and Blackwall had taken first watch. There was nowhere else to be except outside in the rain, in the dark, and the room that had been found for them to share was more than large enough to do so comfortably. It also contained neither foul smells nor bloodstains, which could not be said for much of the rest of the hold. There was a very rickety looking bed frame with some sad, damp rag on it Dorian supposed was meant to pass for a mattress- or a blanket, it was honestly a toss up- and then there was a substantial pile of good straw from which large sacks of meal stuck out. Organization had clearly not been the bandits’ strong suit.

“I don’t suppose you want the bed?” Dorian ventured, watching Bull unclasp his harness and rotate out the shoulder. Bull snorted, giving the cot a once over.

“Not especially. That mean you were considering sleeping on the pile of hay?” Dorian knew he was being teased. He barely huffed, carrying a fistful of straw to a long abandoned iron brazier set into the wall. He cupped his hands over it and a fire sprang to life within, casting little light but some heat out into the room.

“There are worse beds,” Dorian said, and left it at that. He unbuckled his robes with icy fingers, using the task as an excuse not to notice Bull watching him. Dorian draped them over the back of a broken chair to dry.

“Yeah, there are,” Bull said finally, walking over to examine the wooden frame. “Well-”

“No, don’t be absurd. It won’t be able to hold your weight, for a start.”

“All right,” Bull said, with a patience that once sent Dorian’s teeth on edge because he couldn’t understand it, and moreover couldn’t understand why it was being offered to him. Now it made him clench his jaw if only to stop what might tumble stupidly from his lips otherwise. “If you want, I can-”

“You should be tending to your knee,” Dorian said curtly, “not worrying about my comfort.”

He turned away from the flickering warmth to face the Iron Bull, who stood contemplative and quiet several feet away.

 _Only_ several feet away.

“You noticed, huh?” He sounded rueful, but Dorian suspected it was put on.

“I hadn’t realized until this journey that the metal work on your boot was actually a brace. You’re quite discreet with it.” Technically, it wasn’t a lie. Dorian hadn’t realized until Crestwood that the fearsome Iron Bull had a bad knee, and that the wetter the climate the more dearly the brace was needed.

“Never felt the need to get real flashy with it. Figured the eyepatch was enough of a conversation starter.”

“Quite,” Dorian murmured, smiling despite himself. Bull went to settle against the straw, wedging a malleable sack of grain under his elbow, starting to work on removing his boots, then rolling one hideous pant leg up to dismantle the brace. Dorian turned his back, going to hold his hands out over the sorry bedroll in the hopes that he could dry it through. _No_ , he thought, _don’t_ , and before he’d even realized what he was warning himself against, had straightened and turned with his hands still lifted, magic pulsing hot in his palms.

“If you’d like, I could-”

He stopped himself, belatedly. Bull finished setting the brace aside, cushioned by a thin scatter of straw, before lifting his head again to focus on Dorian. The eyepatch caught a little of the orange light of the fire. Bull’s horns gleamed obsidian in the dark. Dorian could see him breathing.

“If I’d like?” Bull repeated slowly, his voice a warm, deep rumble. Dorian’s fingertips itched, not from the magic.

“I could try to… ease the ache,” Dorian said, the words coming out softer than he’d intended. He cleared his throat, swallowed uselessly. “Your knee.”

“No offense, Dorian, but you’re not, from what I’ve seen, much of a healer,” Bull said, equal parts gentleness and wry humor. Dorian was quite good at eviscerating enemies and pulling their spirits out of their bodies to continue the fight on the Inquisitor’s side, and he was moderately skilled at casting barriers. Healing magic was by no means his strong suit. Bull wasn’t wrong.

“Not healing,” he said, trying to infuse a tetchiness he didn’t feel into the words, “just heat. I can’t fix whatever damage you’ve accumulate over your storied career as a scourge of the Imperium, but I can at least make sure you’re not limping about and undercutting our otherwise considerable panache.”

With his robes off, the keenness of Bull’s silent appraisal felt sharper, somehow. It was a foolish gambit, to try and make Bull accept so intimate- if practical- a use of magic so early in their acquaintance. When he declined, as Dorian knew he would, an appropriately dismissive remark would be in order. Something about spurning a useful tool, or Dorian not realizing he was that scary, after all. He half heartedly began to arrange the words in his mind when Bull said, “All right.”

“Oh,” Dorian managed after a moment’s surprise, “well. All right, then.”

He carried himself regally across the rough-hewn floor, chin tilted fractionally up even as he knelt between Bull’s feet. He kept his attention on the knee, pushing down the protective instinct it roused in him, schooling himself to keep anything resembling tenderness from surfacing on his face. He barely hesitated before settling his hands on either side of Bull’s patella, then let them slide a few inches as he pressed hard into the muscle, feeling them give under the application of pressure and heat.

Bull was quiet, his breaths measured and even, until a longer exhale stole out from his lungs and his eyelid fluttered low. _He’s minimizing his response_ , Dorian realized, a powerful surge of affection welling up under his ribs, _He doesn’t want to make me uncomfortable._

Another minute of careful manipulation and Dorian could feel the muscles around Bull’s knee truly relaxing. He slowly dug his fingertips into the curve of the back of Bull’s knee, and the warrior groaned so low and relieved Dorian had to fight to keep himself from looking pleased.

“My methods are effective, then?” he asked, lifting his face so he could be properly smug about it. Which was incredibly stupid of him, really. Bull’s gaze was heavily lidded and dark, the smile curving his mouth soft and amused and possibly impressed, and indescribably appealing. When he chuckled the sound rolled over Dorian like thunder, or a wave, and he felt hot under his skin as though the spell he was casting had spread from his hands to cover the whole of him.

“Hell yeah,” Bull said, corner of his mouth tugging further up, “doubly so if this is some seduction technique.”

The instinct was immediate, to push his hands up along the thick, firm muscles of Bull’s thigh; channel a hint of lightning into his fingertips, just enough to tingle; lean in so Bull got an appealing view of Dorian’s admittedly disastrous, storm tossed hair, dark and all but in his lap.

It would have been easy as breathing to do: A quip traded for a kiss, and then hands everywhere, strong and searching, a warmth generated without magic that would comfort them both through the night.

The instinct was immediate, and it was strong, and Dorian jerked back from it as though he’d been burned.

Too soon. It was _too soon_.

“Fasta vass,” he snapped, voice grating in his throat. He stood and stalked back to the miserable cot that awaited him.

“Dorian,” Bull laughed, though there was a shadow of real remorse in it, “come on-”

“See what I get for extending a courtesy.”

“Hey, Dorian-”

“Good night, Bull.” Dorian’s tone was sharp and final, and he didn’t look back at Bull as he slung himself down onto the ragged cloth. At least it was dry.

It was so quiet he could have believed he imagined hearing it when Bull eventually murmured, “Good night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I seem to keep hitting a wall mid-way that takes days to pick through, and then the rest comes more rapidly. Still hoping to get the time between updates whittled waaaay down. This chapter was meant to carry them a little further, but a few little surprises happened that wrapped it up early, and I'm okay with it! 
> 
> Comments and constructive critique entirely welcome. This chapter unbeta'd and finished past my bedtime, so by all means, please point out any errors or things that may warrant revising.


	4. Pulling the Puzzles Apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorian gets super duper drunk and makes really good decisions.
> 
> Warnings I can think of: Jocular reference to juvenile voyeurism; canon supported off-screen character death; surprise kisses.

Palpable relief flooded Dorian’s limbs when the gates of Skyhold rose before him, even if his breath fogged the air when he sighed. The cold had been crisp and clean, which he knew was as close to summer as the Frostbacks saw. He thought of the garden that would be coming in; the chess board that might have been requisitioned by this point waiting there, and the doors that would open for him, ways to leave some loneliness behind. Make his friends back. There was still novelty in looking upon Skyhold without dread.

Crestwood had been precisely as much fun as he had remembered, between the smell and the demons and the sad, terrible truth of what had happened to the refugees there. They’d almost had to physically drag the Iron Bull away from the second high dragon they’d come across in as many months- the third, if one counted the decrepit monster at Corypheus’ command- and Evelyn had made the misguided attempt of placating him by allowing them to detour and empty out a nest of wyverns.

Blighted Crestwood. Literally.

Even with the rift dispelled and the endless rainfall with it, Dorian’s troubles had persisted in the form of the Iron Bull’s ceaseless, terrible flirting, mostly comprised of questionable double entendres and highly suspect eyebrow waggles, all of which, no matter how benign, had vexed Dorian to his limits. There were only so many ways one could effectively hide a smile, even for a champion eye roller and consummate  _moue_ er such as Dorian. He had sniped ineffectively at the Qunari for the duration of their journey; Bull had segued into staff maintenance, admittedly a good sign. When they did skirt a serious matter, like the longstanding rivalry between their peoples and the reasons for it, Dorian was quick to let it go. Not without a parting shot, whether at the Bull or his homeland’s less defensible propensities, but the knowledge of the choice that awaited Bull in the months ahead stayed Dorian from being too unkind, even if he didn’t particularly feel the Qun warranted kindness.

The mental image of a burning orphanage filled with children was no less abhorrent to him the second time around. He had never dared to ask for more details.

As it happened, the only place Bull didn’t make passes at Dorian was in private. The nights they shared a tent, Bull kept a respectful distance, and never brought up Caer Bronach. Dorian managed not to seem disappointed, and not to watch Bull as he slept. There had to exist a line past which Dorian did not allow himself to venture. A meagre line, perhaps, but a definite one. If he lie awake in the dark for a time to listen to the Qunari breathing, at least that was privately pathetic and not something he was likely to be caught at. It certainly passed the time.

The toll of the journey was written in the line Evelyn’s shoulders as they rode into the lower courtyard. It had been successful but long, and as was common in the early days they still navigated, solving one problem revealed a plethora of new ones. She brightened as they neared the smithy, Cullen and Master Dennet in conversation before it, doubtless awaiting her arrival. Several masked visitors made a show of genteelly recoiling from Dorian as he rode past. He wasn’t sure if the display was more or less crass than the way they openly gawped at Bull.

Who flexed a bit as they did.  _Andraste grant me patience_ , Dorian thought, sniffing to himself. A few shouts rang out as the party dismounted, and they twisted around to find the source was a handful of Chargers and Sera, standing clustered at the edge of the cliff, the bottom of which bracketed the surgeon’s wards.  She threw some caustic glares upward which went entirely unnoticed. Each mercenary held more tankards than they needed and were gesturing broadly with them. The invitation was clear, and the scene amusing enough that Dorian almost missed Josephine where she had stepped to his elbow.

“Serrah Pavus,” she said, and Dorian turned to greet her in kind when he saw she bore a letter in her hand with Mae’s seal on it. His look of genial expectancy barely shuddered as it became a mask.

"Lady Montilyet,” he replied with an even nod of his head.

“A letter arrived for you not four days past. I would have sent a crow, if we had not already had word of your imminent return.”

“I’m grateful to warrant the consideration, Lady Montilyet,” Dorian smiled, extending his hand to accept the letter from her, voice and fingers entirely steady while his mind railed. Not so soon. How could it have been so soon? How had he lost track of the time?

“Of course. This... is the Tilani crest, no?” she asked with polite if perhaps feigned curiosity, once Dorian had taken the envelope, which was worn soft from exchanging so many hands and being tucked into so many saddlebags.

“It is.”

“If you are well acquainted with Magister Tilani, I would humbly ask your aid in making an introduction. She is Varric’s cousin by marriage, I believe, but something a bit more… formal and less...”

“Colorful?” Dorian supplied.

“Something like that- might be appropriate as a first official missive from the Inquisition. I would consider it a great favor.”

“Of course, Lady Montilyet. Thank you for the swift delivery.” He turned abruptly, endeavoring not to crease the paper with his grip. He heard Bull call him, doubtless to invite him up to the Herald’s Rest with the  _boys_ , but Dorian waved him off without looking back.

The library was comparatively quiet, filled only with the whispers of thoughtful voices and turning pages, and comparatively dark, lit mostly by a few sconces and the late afternoon light filtering in through the windows. Dorian hunched over in the chair that marked that particular nook of the tower as his own. It was better to have declared the space his than allow anyone to see he wasn’t welcome anywhere else. An imposing chair with its back to the rest of the floor did the trick nicely. It also shielded him from curious and suspicious gazes alike, without forcing him to hole up in his rooms and be conspicuously absent.

He kept the letter pressed to his chest. It was a foolish gesture, childish; to behave as though not opening it would make its contents untrue. To pretend he needed the confirmation when he knew full well what news the letter bore. The words would be kind and straightforward in Mae’s graceful, purposefully déshabillé hand. He rubbed his fingertips over the wax crest and gritted his teeth.  _You’ve already mourned this_ , he thought. _You sang the rites. This is not a new pain. Let it go._

Two and a half bottles of wine were not quite enough for him to do so. He sprawled on one of Skyhold’s numerous oddly angled rooftops, the last half of what would be bottle three cradled loosely by the neck in one hand, the unopened letter held in the other. It rested over his heart, beneath his palm. The wax was still hard, but it had warmed, and Dorian thought it might have smelled faintly of home. Not true home, but Maeveris’ appointments in Minrathous, which was a close third. He would have to begin the process of arranging contacts and digging up secrets. If Felix was dead, he had a scant few weeks before her letter arrived implying that she might require the mildest assistance in her attempts to overthrow a radical political party full of high society cultists.

Felix had laid the groundwork for him. The unopened letter in his hand said as much. Dorian pondered the concept of seals and cauterization, and hated himself a little for having ever considered trying to use one to act as the other.

“You’re not for real.”

Dorian tilted his head back and found himself looking directly up Sera’s skirt. He grimaced. Plaidweave. Everywhere, plaidweave. Places he’d never wanted to see plaidweave, though to be fair, there was no place he  _did_ .

“In what sense?”

“This. You, up here. You don’t belong up here, you should be sipping something fancy and being all ‘my mustachey smugface is smug-mustachier than yours’ at masky nobs in the big room, or, the other thing you do, you know.”

“Sacrificing the penitent to my wicked Tevinter gods?” Dorian ventured.

“ _Reading_ , or something! Look, just get off my roof!”

“It’s not  _your_ roof,” Dorian countered, propping himself up on one elbow, “it’s  _a_ roof. And there’s no ladies with low cut blouses milling around beneath it, so I don’t know why you want to claim it, anyway.”

“Creepy,” she admonished- loudly- before snorting derisively and clicking her tongue against her teeth, then crouching and leaning over the eave, just to make certain Dorian wasn’t lying. Then she blew a raspberry at nothing.

“Still high up, yeah? And closer to my room than yours, so get off it.”

“I was about to anyway,” Dorian huffed, sitting up and taking stock of which motor skills were currently accessible to him. He thought all of them. He’d surely find out.

“Good.”

“Just know that I’m going because I had planned to and not to accommodate any desires of yours.”

“Ugh, talk more,” Sera groused. Dorian carefully, gently tucked the letter into a pocket set into the lining of his robe.

“...are you pissed?” Sera asked after a length of time he could not immediately determine. Dorian looked up from where he’d almost got the letter perfectly nestled. She looked harried, sitting cross legged, knees akimbo, with her hands gripped lightly over her ankles. He sniffed, spent another however many moments were requisite gingerly poking the letter down into the pocket with the tip of a finger, the smoothed his thumb up his mustache and looked down his nose at her.

“I’m fine,” he declared, tone downright lackadaisical, then turned and nearly fell through the window on his way back inside.

He found himself in the Herald’s Rest with a large tankard of swill in his hands and an unusually quiet Sera beside him. She watched him the way she typically did, the way many members of the Inquisition tended to, which was with mingled alarm and distaste, only she wasn’t making off color jokes.

“This is not good,” he declared of the beer, wanting to make his position on the matter clear before he emptied his cup again.

“Izzat why you’ve had four of ‘em?” she asked pointedly.

“Four? Oh, dear,” Dorian murmured, turning the tankard one way then the other. “No, I’ve no recollection of the other three, you must be mistaken.” He drank deeply.

“Are you trying to kill him?” Skinner appeared at the bar, looking as interested as she usually was in the prospect of a Shemlen dying, which was to say, considerably. She didn’t sound as though she intended to discourage Sera from making the attempt, at any rate.

“No! Well, not now, no,” Sera said.

“Ooh, are we toasting the People?” Dalish asked, coming up to slip an arm around Skinner’s shoulder and beam at the group.

“Yes, let’s,” Dorian enthused in the same breath that Skinner and Sera made disagreeable noises of varying volume. Behind him he could hear a fainter Tevinter-accented voice lilting, “Uh, Chief,” through the din.

A roiling discomfort flooding his limbs was the next sensation of which Dorian was aware. He was lying prone, which apparently his stomach disapproved of, and there was, from somewhere, light being shone directly into his skull. Everything was misery. Stabbing a hole through time and waltzing through it had been more pleasant than consciousness presently was. It took Dorian the better part of an hour to be able to stand, although the supply of water and elfroot on his nightstand was helpful. Clever of him to have set it out the night before despite his inebriation. Then again, as far as hangovers went, this was hardly the worst of his life. Dorian had spent an awful lot of time draining space for himself at the bottoms of various bottles, particularly through his twenties, and even with some time lapsed he was hardly a novice. Accumulated experience didn’t dissipate with a paltry couple years’ (relative) sobriety.

When his stomach was settled and his color somewhat returned, Dorian took stock. His clothing from the night before was rumpled and discarded in several locations across the floor and furniture, and still smelled of travel and booze.  A tight knot formed in the pit of his stomach, and he lurched over to grab the robe up-

Empty. The interior pocket was empty. Second in familiarity only to the sickly pounding of his pulse in his skull was the loathing that now settled along his limbs like stone weights, filling his guts and his throat, making them feel tight and leaden. It wasn’t the nausea of dehydration, though he had happily mistaken it for such when he’d first begun to explore the anesthetizing properties of alcohol. He knew better, now.

The urge to panic and tear the room apart was subverted only by his unsteadiness, which turned out to be for the best when he spied, sitting pristine and carefully propped up against his mirror, in the center of his writing desk, the letter from Mae. Seal intact. He sagged onto the stool that nestled under the desk, allowing himself to breathe again, and grimaced at his reflection. The gap in his memory of the previous evening gaped suddenly large.

Armed against the day (and whatever fallout he might face from behaviors inspired by but ultimately lost to Fereldan ale) with clean, blue robes and impeccably tousled hair, Dorian made his way to the hall. He needed bread and fruit and water, and then to be left alone for some time. The first three would be easily achieved at the Herald, beloved as he was not of the kitchen staff, and he was happily mastering putting one foot in front of the other without grimacing when a clear, ringing voice crawled into his ears and conjured a static cage around his brain.

“Dorian, my dear, would you be ever so kind as to join us aloft?”

Dorian, and every head within earshot, which was all of them, it seemed, including Varric’s, turned toward the balcony where two pairs of horns, one fabric hennin and one bone, were silhouetted against the window.

_Now?_ Dorian thought, but said, “Is it truly so pressing a matter, Madame?”

“It is, yes,” she called down, then turned away from the railing. Bull didn’t, but Dorian couldn’t make out his expression. Too annoyed to feel ill at ease, Dorian strode back through the rotunda to the stairs.

He didn’t need to feign surprise or dismay when Solas fell into step beside him.

“Oh, what?”

“A bit churlish this morning, Dorian. Or dare I say this afternoon.”

“Why are you following me?”

“Madame de Fer requested my presence as well,” Solas said, the twist in his voice when he referenced Vivienne’s title venturing toward unkindness. “You’ve kept her waiting.”

Dorian answered with a groan and slung himself up the last half of the stairs. The tableau that awaited them once they’d passed former Grand Enchanter Fiona and Helsima (whom Dorian gave a wide berth knowing it would not offend), was alarming only in the vague way that the people gathered didn’t seem like they normally would be, under agreeable circumstances. To begin with, Cole was there.

_Fuck_ , thought Dorian.

“Cole,” Solas said, sounding as surprised as Dorian could recall hearing, “is everything well?”

“As adorable as it is to watch you mother hen the demon, it is not our present concern,” Vivienne interjected, earning a sour glare from Solas. Bull’s attention was on Dorian, not that he was broadcasting it, and Evelyn, silhouetted against the open air of Vivienne’s balcony, was guarded and plainly a bit annoyed.

“You see, my dear,” Vivienne continued, turning to Dorian, “‘Cole’ has presented us with a matter that requires clarification, which is not it’s strong suit, as you well know.”

“What?” Dorian prompted frankly, frowning.

“Not to clarify. To quell, to kill the doubt. It can’t be, I can’t not have seen, not him. So much alike and then unlike, so familiar on the surface but extraordinary: Exiled, different, just like-”

“Thank you for the demonstration, but that’s quite enough,” Vivienne interrupted.

“You know me, what I am. They want to know why, how, but- I can’t say,” Cole said, turning his big watery eyes on Dorian. He felt his gut twist around and sink, but whether the sensation was dread or nausea it was quickly overridden by hot, incredulous ire.

“Are you asking me if I’m a demon?!”

“Spirit,” Solas said.

“I’m- shut up, Solas! I’m not a fucking demon!” Dorian gritted his teeth and bit back a groan, driving the heel of his palm against his temple.

“You are pretty powerful. Wear a lot of buckles. Fancy mustache. Could be a desire demon,” Bull offered, voice entirely casual and almost amused, but the tightness in the curl of his fingers against his own biceps told a different story. Dorian’s face screwed up into something halfway between disgust and hurt.

“Just because I don’t vacation in the Fade with my shabby hobo mage friends doesn’t mean I’m unstudied in it!” Dorian snapped, gratified by the slight noise of affront that emanated from Solas’ direction. “There is no recorded precedent for what Cole is, but theoretically there is no reason for him not to exist! What did you  _say_ ?”

He rounded on Cole as he asked the question, knowing himself to be the embodiment of hungover exasperation but not able to care, in the moment.

“Only that you had touched the Fade, walked through it, like the Inquisitor but not, like me, but- not.”

“And you opted to focus on the Fade-touching as opposed to the ‘ _not_ ’s?” Dorian hissed. Vivienne was unphased.

“No need for such histrionics, Lord Dorian,” she said, the full round ‘o’ sounds framed perfectly and mockingly between her lips. “If you say you aren’t a demon, you aren’t a demon.”

"...is this a joke? Was this a joke? Are you- what’s the charming Southern phrase- ‘having me on’?” Dorian demanded with increasing volume.

"Does he mean the time magic?” Evelyn prompted, and all heads turned her way. Cole’s needed to tip at a particularly odd angle to do so, as he was nearly dangling off the balcony rail. His hat somehow remained on his head unimpeded by any gravitational pull.

“When Cole says you’ve walked through the Fade like I have, or like he has-”

“Sort of. I haven’t  _physically_ gone into it, thank the Maker, but yes, I’ve moved through time, both with you and- before, but not nearly so extensively. We went forward a year, spent half a day there, and then came back having altered the flow of the world, it’s not-”

It wasn’t the same thing as being totally displaced. Dagna had phrased it more succinctly, but Dorian had either replaced his former self, or had created a point at which the world would, eventually, unravel entirely.

He couldn’t deal with it in the moment.

“Cole, am I- Have I ever been anyone but myself? Is there anyone in me that isn’t me?”

Cole straightened and looked Dorian over quizzically, began to shake his head, then paused, and looked Bull over with the same sort of puzzlement.

“....no. But?” he began and the Iron Bull straightened away from the railing.

“Is there anyone this isn’t giving a headache? Can we wrap this up? Dorian’s not a demon, time travel is a lousy idea that only a mage would come up with, beg your pardon ma'am, and our ‘Vint is about to throw up whatever’s in his system all over Madame Vivienne’s balcony. I’m guessing it’s bile.”

Dorian  _queased_ , which he hadn’t been aware was a verb until that moment. Vivienne’s gaze turned icy.

“I’m sure you can stumble yourself out, darling.”

“Dorian,” Evelyn said, starting for the stairs, “find me later, if you would. Solas.”

The elf turned from the group, narrow and contemplative, to follow Evelyn. Cole was next to Bull, quite suddenly, still looking confused about something.

“You’re not a demon either, the Iron Bull.”

“Uh, no,” Bull agreed, even as he began to usher Dorian toward the scaffolding, and the door that opened to the empty walk above the garden courtyard.

“Then how could you be inside someone else? You’re so big. They would burst.”

“That’s- Yeah,” Bull said, the thought broken up by a strangled noise. “Look, just- go drug some cats or something for a while, okay, kid?”

“All right,” Cole said, and disappeared.

“You have him drugging cats?” Dorian asked weakly, not at all protesting the massive hand at his back, maneuvering him down the short flight of stairs and out of the grand hall, into the fresh cold air.

“Why is he drugging cats?”

“It’s really convoluted but trust me that it’s for a good cause,” Bull chuckled, and dropped his hand away as Dorian steadied himself against the battlement, breathing the air in deep. He couldn’t see his own skin, but he  _felt_ less green.

“Please tell me you didn’t think-”

“No,” Bull said decisively, but Dorian kept looking at him sidelong, anyway.

“You bastard,” he said after a moment, and Bull lifted his hands defensively.

“You can be kinda-”

“Demon-y?!” Dorian said, aghast, and Bull’s mouth pulled a little in contrition.

“No. No. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone wear their magic like you do, though. And I’ve spent a lot of time around ‘Vints.”

“In combat. On Seheron. Of all the miserable, Makerforsaken places. It’s not the same.”

“It isn’t,” Bull conceded, all diplomacy. “You’re right.”

“I know.”

“Okay, I said you’re right.”

“I  _know_ ,” Dorian said again, glowering, and Bull smiled a little and looked out over the courtyard.

They were quiet for a while, taking in the sounds of the afternoon. It was companionable, and comforting, although Dorian realized the sentiment probably didn’t go both ways.

“I’m not going to vomit,” he said, and winced at himself.  _Lovely. Very attractive._ “You needn't babysit me.”  _Ah, a solid, churlish follow-up. What a delight you are, Master Pavus._

He hated himself fiercely in that moment.

“And I’ve work to do,” he said, pushing back from the masonry, “so if you’ll excuse me-”

The sudden warm grip around his wrist would have stopped him without exerting an ounce of force, but Dorian found himself pulled away from the battlement and bussed against the wall, Bull’s massive frame blocking the garden and the rooftops on its opposite side from view.

“What-” he said, but then Bull was kissing him, a hard, swift crush of their mouths that chased the cold away and replaced it with a feverish warmth. Dorian responded, pressing off the wall, catching his fingers in the strap of Bull’s harness to pull him closer and gripping Bull’s side where the leather of the pauldron dipped low over his ribs. Bull’s hands cradled the back of Dorian’s skull and covered the small of his back down to his hips, gripping, keeping him close.

It had all escalated rather quickly.

A noise slipped unbidden from Dorian’s throat when Bull broke away, though their faces stayed close together. Dorian could feel the thud of Bull’s heart, like the slow-reverberating strike of a massive drum or the distant, steady roll of thunderous waves. He himself was gasping, lightheaded, and still clinging to the Qunari’s armor.

On the fourth ragged exhale, Dorian tried to use his breath to form words, getting as far as, “How dare-” before Bull pulled Dorian bodily from the wall and up against him into another kiss. It was deeper, no gentler, but thorough and tasting and Dorian went weak in the knees both from the force of it and familiarity.

It took every ounce of self awareness he had access to in the moment not to reach up and grip one of Bull’s horns.

Bull slid his hands across Dorian’s body until he had a firm grip on his shoulders, and then gently tugged the mage back to lean him against the stone. Bull shifted back a half step, and took a moment to let his gaze rake over Dorian from head to toe and back again, which did nothing for Dorian’s composure.

“Why,” Dorian said, thoughts struggling to arrange themselves, “did what happened just- did what just happened happen. Why did that- Why did you do that?”

Not that he was complaining. In all the time he’d known Bull, including the time before he’d cognizantly  _wanted_ Bull, he had never been quite so grabby without some sort of invitation or prior agreement.

_Perhaps you’ve grown more alluring with age_ . Dorian decided he needed to be less sardonic with himself.

“Just holding up my side of a bargain. Let’s talk about it later, I’ve got to meet up with the Seeker.”

“Oh,” Dorian replied. Bull was still warm, and close, and looking at Dorian as though he were a puzzle, but one Bull was particularly keen to figure out and not at all distressed that he hadn’t, yet.

“Well,” Dorian added, and uncurled his fingers from where they were yet hooked around the strap of Bull’s harness, clearing his throat gently and tucking them under his own elbow.

"Eat something,” Bull bossed him as he drew away, “and take it easy today, big guy.”

He departed through the door back toward Vivienne’s perch, and Dorian remained alone on the parapet, still warm despite the chill, wondering at the ache that accompanied the lingering flavor on his tongue of crushed mint leaves and clean water, and the unmistakable taste of the Iron Bull’s lips.

As it happened, Evelyn was the one to find Dorian later that evening. He had eaten and bathed and spent some of the day arguing with requisitions and some of it swiftly translating the absolute garbage they had on hand. He had then settled in with a hot cup of the spiciest tea to be found in Skyhold and opened Mae’s letter.

It hurt, as he’d known it would, and he missed Felix so fiercely for a moment he entertained the idea of going back down to the cellar to crack open another reserve, but then Evelyn found him and he had forgotten, until he relived it, how deeply helpful and comforting she could truly be. She asked about Felix, about Dorian’s time in Alexius’ house. She urged him to strive and meet Felix’s example and, perhaps most touching, really, the gratitude she expressed for Felix’s gesture of standing before the Magisterium and speaking of the Inquisition’s value and importance was so genuine it made Dorian feel compelled to pen a thank you note. Unfortunately, the one to whom the thanks ought to go was no longer available to receive it.

“It hurts, more than I expected,” he admitted, after the pair of them wound up tucked against the window, sharing sips of the room temperature tea.

“I don’t know that we can ever levy our expectations to meet a loss of such magnitude,” Evelyn murmured. “Even when you tell yourself, ‘this will happen, and this, and this’, when they do, even if you thought you’d prepared- You never how you’re going to feel about a thing until it’s happened.”

“Mmn.”

“Dorian, I’m sorry for this morning. I know you and Vivienne don’t see eye to eye on much-”

“Footwear,” Dorian stated.

“On much else,” Evelyn corrected herself, “but that wasn’t what I intended at all. You’re quite mysterious, though, and I did wonder… I did wonder what Cole meant.”

“I understand, truly. It isn’t easy being the only one of something. Being rare is it’s own burden. I know that must sound glib, but I do mean it.” He reached out and took her Fade-marked hand, threading their fingers together and squeezing, wishing he could reassure her more. She turned her face from the window pane and smiled, though, and that too was plainly genuine.

“I’ve a report or two to go over. I should do it, I suppose,” she sighed. “The sooner they’re done, the sooner I can sleep.”

“Go,” Dorian urged her. “Be important. Inquisit.” She snorted a little, a rare tick, and Dorian grinned as he watched her head down to the rotunda.

He found the Iron Bull holding court in his usual place, though when he set his tankard down and took a seat at the opposite end of the table beside Rocky, there was a considerable shift in the group’s focus. The Chargers, perhaps the most irrepressibly noisy and overly familiar group of mercenaries ever to be assembled, went quiet, and there was an expectant quality to the sudden absence of sound.

“Please, don’t stop on my account. What heartwarming tale of mischievous recalcitrance or killing people for money shall we be regaled with this evening?”

Across the bar a high pitched voice could be dimly heard shouting  _Use real words!_ , but Dorian studiously ignored it, even as Krem and Dalish glanced over toward the source.

“How about giant-baiting?” Bull offered, unphased, and Dorian made a show of rolling his eyes. It was an art form at which he excelled. Particularly with his kohl applied and carefully smudged just so, and the glance of red clay dust against his lids, Dorian’s already expressive eyes were even more a focal point.

“We’ve all heard that one. Not that it isn’t enjoyable. Don’t you have anything with flashy sword duels or kidnapped royalty or nudity?”

“The giant was nude,” Bull pointed out. Skinner grimaced at something far off in the distance only she could see, or perhaps could never  _unsee_ .

“I’ll pass, thanks. How disappointing.”

“There was the one time we got hired to protect someone’s ship,” Krem ventured.

“No seafaring voyages, please,” Dorian winced. Just the thought made him queasy again.

“No, it was on land, actually,” Krem said. “He wanted its maiden voyage to be-”

“Oh, fuck, that’s right,” Stitches interjected.

“-out of a specific port but he wanted the thing built by some aging master, so we had to guard the damn boat-”

“Ship,” Rocky corrected.

“Which had gilt on every surface that wasn’t eventually going to be submerged,” Dalish laughed.

“-over land to get it back to his ocean side estate.”

“That one has nudity in it, too,” Bull said. It took a while to get to said nudity, though in all fairness Krem was slowed somewhat by the numerous interruptions. He wove the tale well, to the point that by the time he’d reached the naked part, Varric had joined the table and was taking notes.

“Wrong bits,” Sera protested, nose crinkling up, and Krem laughed.

“Not the ones I would’ve picked to see, either, but that’s how it happened.”

Dorian had barely made it to the bottom of his ale. He kept it cold, idly trailing his fingertip over the glyph he’d writ onto the tankard’s side, and the crispness of it made it palatable enough for nursing.

"Come on,” Bull said, heaving himself up from the table, “you’re buying this round.”

“Why?” Dorian asked, “I haven’t lost a bet, have I?”

Bull chuckled and shook his head even as the Chargers (and Sera) pounded the table top with aggressive encouragement. Dorian followed Bull to the bar, and wasn’t terribly surprised when the Qunari ordered and payed, then shrugged sideways for an unoccupied table with only two chairs left at it, in the corner by the kitchen entrance.

“Is this where I am to be given an explanation for this morning's-”

“Afternoon’s,” Bull murmured, and Dorian glared in place of swatting at him.

“- _morning’s_ terrible rudeness?”

Bull settled on one of the two chairs and leaned back in it so he could better survey Dorian. Dorian shifted his posture accordingly, and was rewarded by the glance of Bull’s eyes toward Dorian’s hips and shoulders, and then definitely his throat, and finally his face. He raised an expectant eyebrow.

"How much do you remember about last night?” Bull asked.

Dorian was careful not to react visibly. The answer was next to nothing. Bull had to know that.

“Oh, vague snippets of conversation. An endless parade of barely passable beverages to quaff. The usual.”

“The usual,” Bull murmured, “right. You don’t remember the favor you asked of me?”

Oh dear. Dorian felt the corner of his mouth slip, tug fractionally down. He didn’t bother keeping the wariness or dismay from creeping into his tone.

“...No.”

“Or the bargain you bartered for said favor?”

“Also, no.”

“Well, Dorian, you got a little drunk.”

Dorian’s nostrils flared and he considered turning on his heel and finding someplace to hide for a while, but instead he took the chair opposite Bull, crossed his legs, and steeled himself.

“You left the elfroot, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“And you put the letter on my dresser, where I would find it.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t completely clear on what was up with the letter, but it seemed important.”

“It was. Is. Did you- undress me?” Dorian asked, cursing internally at the hitch in his voice. Bull’s gaze was dark, and warm, and Dorian knew that wasn’t just the tavern lighting.

“I got your boots and your robe off. Which was a hell of a trick. Anything else you were missing in the morning, you managed to squirrel out of yourself.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Dorian bit out, and cleared his throat.

“Thank you,” he said again, more gently, “but about the… bargain, and the-”

“Favor, right,” Bull said with an easy wave of his hand. “The favor was, I got you back to your room quickly and in one piece. The bargain was, you said I could kiss you, in the morning, when you were sober again.”

A warmth began to prickle across Dorian’s face and ears. It was a blush. He despised blushing. It happened so rarely. His complexion didn’t much lend itself to giving blushes away, but Bull had incredibly sharp eyes. Dorian cleared his throat.

“Did… I.”

“Yep,” Bull said, starting to grin. The scar on his upper lip was tugging tellingly to one side. It was going to be slow forming and incredibly handsome on him.

“Did I say you could kiss me  _twice_ ?”

“Oh, this is my favorite part,” Bull replied, voice pitching low in a way that Dorian knew meant Bull  _meant it_ . “You said if you called me a brute, I could, and this is a direct quote- ‘smack your ass’-”

“Oh, no,” Dorian said very, very quietly.

“-If you called me a savage, I was supposed to tell you ‘no, that’s bad’ and you would apologize-”

Dorian dragged his fingertips very hard across his forehead.

“-and you said, and you were very clear on this point, that if you said ‘how dare you’ I was to kiss you again, without hesitation.”

Dorian remained still, his hand over his eyes, for the space of a few breaths before he dropped it and dared to look at Bull’s expression of smug, barely contained glee.

“You  _are_ a brute, look how much you’re enjoying this.”

“I’d rather look at you enjoying me being a brute somewhere a little more private.”

“Fasta vass,” Dorian hissed. “You’re-”

“If you say it again, I’m gonna take you at your drunken word.”

“Don’t you  _dare_ ,” Dorian warned, leaning forward a little. “Bull, this isn’t-”

“Why isn’t it?” Bull asked. “They don’t care. Hillie will serve them their drinks, they won’t give us a second thought.”

“The Chargers aren’t the only ones in here.”

The Herald’s Rest was full, mostly of soldiers. Some visitors would brave the place, but it was not Visiting Dignitary Friendly without a bit of advanced warning. No one had been warned, tonight.

“You think  _they_ care?” Bull was grinning again, and Dorian wanted nothing more than to crawl across the table and into his lap, onlookers be damned.

“...They might,” he said instead, and before Bull could react more than with a dismissive snort, placed a hand pointedly on the table, nail digging into the wood.

“They might. You’re liked, Bull. The Chargers are liked. But there are people here from Kirkwall. There are people who think they know what I am, and what you are, and they will make assumptions about your motivations and mine. What do you think those assumptions will be?”

Their substantial order had been poured and was being arranged on the largest tray the barmaid had in her arsenal. Bull was doubtless aware, but didn’t move to aid her just yet. The potential answers to Dorian’s proposed hypothetical were not pleasant. He knew this. Any reason for a Qunari to screw an evil ‘Vint Magister’s son that wasn’t at best petty and at worst malicious would still be depraved. It wasn’t the sort of murmuring they needed, not with the atmosphere of uneasiness around the Grey Wardens’ disappearance permeating the ranks. Not with Adamant looming, though no one in the room knew that yet but Dorian.

He smiled at Bull, a fleeting, cynical little thing, and said, “We can’t,” with all the gentleness he could muster.

“Not now,” Bull clarified, and Dorian smiled more, though it was rueful. He sat back.

“No, not now.”

“You’re a smart guy, Dorian,” Bull said as he stood up. “But you overthink things. So I’ll tell you what- you overthink this for as long as you want, and know that whenever you reach a conclusion? My door is open.”

“You seem very optimistic as to what that conclusion will be.” Dorian angled an eyebrow at him as Bull gently waved the barmaid away from the tray with a coin pressed into her palm, and lifted the overloaded thing with one hand. He offered Dorian a broad, uneven grin in response.

“Well, I do happen to be an optimist.” He went back to the table and was greeted with thunderous hoots of gratitude. Dorian watched him, was _contented_ to watch him, and didn’t take his leave until Bull was seated again and their eyes had chanced to meet once more.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is unbeta'd so sorry for any clunkiness and errors! Has anyone noticed the titles are Coldplay song lyrics yet? I'm sorry. I don't know why.
> 
> This ended massively sooner in the timeline than I planned, but the next part is mostly written, so it'll come more quickly. Also a mini-chapter covering the gaps in Dorian's drunky drunk memories, from Bull's POV.
> 
> And thanks for your patience and for reading this thing. I'm so grateful to all of you!
> 
> Please drop by my tumblr and send me a prompt of a whatever, I dunno! Stuff and things! doozer-doodles.tumblr


	5. The Bargain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interlude in which the drunken gap in Dorian Pavus' memory is presented from the point of view of the Iron Bull.

The Herald’s Rest was the perfect kind of boisterous. Steins knocking together punctuated the continuing flow of raucous laughter as soldiers, couriers, engineers, stablehands, smiths, and even one or two of the Ambassador’s favorite assistants all found a way to keep the darkness at bay for one more night. The Inquisition was a beacon for all of Thedas- that was the line they were selling, anyway, and to be fair, Trevelyan made it easy to do- and its members were as dedicated as any army Bull had ever seen. Inspired, even. Haven was a blow people were still recovering from, though, and getting Skyhold up and running was a gargantuan task. They knew the face of their enemy and the road so far had been tough; the path ahead wasn’t especially clear, and didn’t seem like it was going to get much easier.

So the resident tavern was busy, most of the time. Made sense. Bull liked it. Made it easy to keep tabs on people, new faces and old, and check the Inquisition’s pulse on a nightly basis. It also meant there was pressure to keep the stocks up, and with the shifting suppliers and constantly burgeoning trade relationships Josephine was forming, the stocks were varied and usually damn good. In Bull’s book, it was a solid win-win.

“Uh, Chief.”

It was the tone that put the red flag up. Krem, for all the sass mouthing, was a pretty even-keel kind of guy. Even when he was over his head, he’d say as much directly. It was incredibly valuable, having a second in command uninterested in posturing, who wasn’t just forthright but relatively open. Definitely worth an eye. The confusion and wariness in Krem’s voice had no place in the Herald’s Rest, and Bull set his drink down and leaned back from the table so he could get a good look at whatever had Krem on edge.

“Awe, shit. What?” Bull muttered.

At the bar,  _doing shots_ , were Skinner and Dalish and Sera.

And Dorian.

Bull had never seen him so loose limbed. The mage was far too self aware to allow it. Oh, he managed to hold himself in ways that  _seemed_ unconcerned, but this was something else entirely. There was no tension around Dorian’s eyes or mouth. It was... appealing.

There was plenty of tension visible on Skinner, though, and Bull liked the ‘Vint enough that he didn’t want to see him publicly flayed. Bull swallowed the rest of his tankard before hoisting himself up from the table, and sauntered over to the unlikely drinking crew.

“To the beauty, intricacy, and mystery of the vallaslin,” Dorian was saying, leaving Dalish giggling and unabashedly delighted while Sera nearly wretched.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been holding out on me.” The quartet of faces turned up to take him in. At least two of them seemed pleased.

“Oh, this wouldn’t do much for you, chief. It’s not that Qunari rotgut of yours,” Dalish said.

“It’s rubbish,” Dorian added, but he was smiling, and gesture toward Dalish with a ‘cheers’ motion before taking his shot. Bull watched Dorian down it, the bob of his throat and the way he licked his lower lip once the glass was empty, then set it rim down on the bartop.

“What’s the gutrot?” he asked with a conversational lilt to his voice, and Bull felt his eyebrows crawl up toward his horns. Dorian was completely shitfaced, and Bull couldn’t detect even the faintest trace of a slur in his words. It was pretty impressive.

“Maraas-lok,” Bull explained, gesturing slightly to Dalish with one hand, then taking all three of the women’s place at the bar as they shrank back with what was left of the bottle. Dorian either wasn’t aware, or didn’t care. He seemed pleased enough to keep his attention on Bull.

“Really only something for special occasions.”

“Oh,” Dorian said, with a sage nod of his head, then looked expectantly around the bar.

“So let’s drink it.”

“Maybe not tonight. What have you been drinking? Let’s get a round of that.”

Dorian sniffed and tossed his head just enough to make a lock of his hair fall out of place. It ended up looking dashing. Dorian was liquid confidence, hammered out of his mind, not like he was usually _lacking_ for it.

“You couldn’t afford it, even with what the Inquisitor’s paying you. But ale should suffice.”

“If you’re sure you want another one,” Bull said, leaning more heavily on the bar, cheating his body closer. On their best days, proximity made Dorian draw himself up and in, guarded and careful. They hadn’t touched each other beyond occasionally offering a hand up after a tough fight in weeks. Now, Dorian almost-  _almost_ \- visibly swayed, first toward Bull, and then, like an afterthought, away again.

“....yes,” Dorian said, but didn’t sound convinced. He glanced sideways at Bull’s hand where it curved over the edge of the bar, and something flickered in his eyes. Bull was used to that hand in particular getting some sideways looks, but there was no disgust in Dorian’s eyes. It was something more complicated.

“...no,” he said, shaking his head, and slipped from the stool he’d been occupying as though to take his leave. When Bull realized Dorian was probably going to continue slipping right on down to the floor, he brought a hand up to catch the mage by the elbow.

“Woah,” Bull chuckled, “easy. Think you might be making the right call.”

“Yes,” Dorian said, looking at Bull’s hand on his elbow. He lifted his face to blink at the Bull, twice, and then looked suddenly obstinate.

“Wait. Do that song.”

Bull glanced back to where the Chargers were all drinking and talking and doing a truly miserable job of pretending not to watch his exchange with the ‘Vint.

“Uh,” Bull said.

“The one! The horns one!” Dorian demanded, catching the front of Bull’s pauldron and giving it an adamant tug, as though he could shake Bull into action. Of all the requests, that wasn’t the one Bull would have anticipated.

“....Hey,” he said, raising his voice, “it’s too damn quiet in here. Rocky!”

Rocky, always the first to leap at the opportunity to randomly break into song, did so with aplomb, and the other Chargers joined in. Only Krem kept his eyes on Bull, looking strangely tense. Bull shrugged one shoulder, then started to manhandle Dorian as subtly as he could out of the thick of the tavern floor.

“We don’t usually sing on request,” Bull told him, all good humor, knowing Dorian would have no memory of the exchange.

“Yet you obliged,” Dorian purred. It was definitely a purr. Most of the truly soused flirtations Bull had experienced in the south had been…. well, messy, for a start. No harm no foul, and amusing as it was to be on the receiving end, he wouldn’t have mocked anyone making the attempt. People got drunk, people flirted. This, though, was something else. In the poor lighting of the tavern Dorian’s eyes were the color of smoke, veiled by thick lashes, and the curl of his mouth was, in a word, promising. Dorian was staggeringly, black out drunk, yet Bull had seen less competent postures of seduction on Orlesian bards.

“I’m an obliging guy,” Bull said without missing a beat, and Dorian laughed, a real, warm bark of it that forced his head back. Bull caught him from stumbling again.

“Yeah, I’m hilarious. What do you say we get you into bed, huh?”

Dorian’s hand was at his pauldron again, palm spread across Bull’s sternum, fingers spanning his chest.

“Yours is right upstairs, isn’t it?”

How about that. Bull had figured he and Dorian would get a few drinks in them and see where the impetus behind that Crestwood Keep massage had come from, but he hadn’t figured it would be so soon, and he hadn’t figured he’d have to turn it down. That part was pretty lousy. Dorian was pretty to look at all of the time, fun to wind up most of the time, dangerous and smart, definitely an intriguing bed partner. Now, though, warm and flushed and practically in Bull’s arms, he was downright intoxicating. Bull had a very clear mental image of where the evening could have gone if Dorian had only been one sheet to the wind instead of three.

“Yeah,” he said, carefully wrapping his hand around Dorian’s wrist and tugging the man’s arm down. Dorian might not have been particularly aware of, or concerned with, their surroundings in the moment, but Bull knew full well that Dorian would care and care a _lot_ if he woke up to rumors and snide remarks circling about the two of them. It would set them back months. Bull didn’t want that. Dorian, in addition to being an interesting puzzle, was the son of a magister with important political connections, a brilliant researcher, and an incredibly talented mage. Getting close to him was the smart move, and Bull had been making headway. He didn’t want that squandered.

Dorian also had a sensitivity about appearing foolish, and Bull didn’t want to see the guy hurt, either. Call him a softy.

“And that’s definitely an option, if you ever want to crash in it. But I think you’ll be happier in the morning if we get you back to your room.”

Dorian’s lips moved in the shadow of a moue, his gaze having slipped from roaming over Bull’s face to hovering somewhere around his clavicle.

“...I  _am_ drunk,” Dorian said, and Bull couldn’t tell if that was an admission or a realization.

“I got the feeling you might be.”

“You won’t take advantage.” Bull almost chuckled. Dorian sounded vaguely annoyed.

“No, not really my style.”

“I know,” Dorian sighed, “because you’re very good.”

Not entirely sure where this was coming from, Bull went back to ushering Dorian to the door, keeping an arm slung around him so he didn’t fall over or down or walk into anything.

“That’s- nice. Thanks, Dorian.”

Dorian heaved another sigh in response and walked where he was guided, more or less. There was a slight tendency to meander. Bull flashed Krem one last exaggerated look of  _Don’t ask me_ over his shoulder, then pushed the tavern door open and led Dorian into the night. Immediately, the mage burrowed into Bull’s side, shivering and scowling, although the alcohol had softened his features enough that it looked considerably more pouty and dismayed than angry. Dorian was a champion scowler, Bull had come to know. The man’s glares could cut obsidian.

“It’s a good song,” Dorian said after a while of walking in silence.

“Yeah, I like it,” Bull replied. The vestibule of the great hall was empty this late. Sconces were lit but didn’t cast much light. Dorian turned in the dark, stopping them, bracing himself with a hand on Bull’s shoulder.

“I can go. From here,” Dorian said, not at all convincingly.

“Lotta stairs,” Bull pointed out, and Dorian groaned as though he’d forgotten, or hadn’t considered them until that moment.

“Oh, no, there  _are_ lots of stairs.”

“Yep.”

“No, look,” Dorian said, as firmly as Bull thought he was able, in his current state, “I’ll make you a deal.”

Bull hadn’t any intention of abandoning Dorian to stumble around until he passed out somewhere he’d be found, probably by Solas, in the morning, and it might have been the nobler thing to point that out, but Bull was a sucker for a good  _deal_ .

“Yeah?”

“Yeah-  _yes_ ,” Dorian said, and took Bull by the hand like he was a small child and lead him, in a not entirely straight beeline, for the chairs set up by the hearth where Varric spent most of his time. At the moment it was somewhat obscured by scaffolding, and the coals were banked, not aflame, but the heat radiating out from it was nice anyway. Bull sat as Dorian did, and leaned his elbow on his knee to adopt a posture of  _listening_ , which Dorian seemed pleased with.

“Okay, I’m going to make you a deal. Yes?”

“So you said.”

“If you aid me in traversing the stairs and, Maker knows,  _bird shit_ , awful creatures, then in the morning when I am less-”

“Plastered.”

“- _inebriated_ , thank you,” Dorian said (impressively, Bull had to admit, the man’s drunk vocabulary was impressive), “when I am not drunk, you may kiss me.”

He looked inordinately pleased with himself. It was pretty charming, Bull thought. He liked Dorian’s edges, the way he’d hiss and show his claws when provoked, the way he’d use language when he wanted to be  _truly_ cutting, but it was undeniable that with those edges rounded by drink, Dorian was still attractive. In a different way, maybe, though he remained very… Dorian.

“That’s a pretty good deal,” Bull admitted, happy to indulge the mage more than he might any other friend who was quite so drunk. “But what if you forget you made it and set my horns on fire?”

“I wouldn’t!” Dorian blurted, reaching out to put his hand over the back of Bull’s wrist. The sincerity scrawled across his features was so earnest it made something in Bull’s chest twinge. Sympathy, or maybe guilt.

“I know,” Bull said, tone reassuring, gentle. “I know you wouldn’t. Still, you might get angry.”

“Hmmn. Issa point,” Dorian agreed, sitting back and running his fingertips over his mustache, giving the matter serious consideration, indeed.

He was starting to slur.

“Then- Oh! Yes. All right. If you get me up the upstairs safely, then you may kiss me in the morning when I am the not- when I am not drunk, and if I get angry you- here’s the deal, all right?”

“Right,” Bull said, absently pressing his knuckles over his mouth.

“If I get angry and I call you a brute,” Dorian said, “you have leave to smack my ass in recompense.”

Bull nearly barked a laugh loud enough to wake the Inquisitor in her private chambers. He sat up straighter, grinning broadly, shaking his head.

“Dorian-”

“I think that’s fair.”

“Well, sure, but-”

“And if I call you a savage,” Dorian went on, so Bull quieted himself, “then you say- then you tell me ‘no.  _That’s bad_ ’.” Dorian pointed his finger at the Bull and didn’t wag it so much as let it hang in the air with all the intention of a very firm reprimand.

“Because you aren’t one, and I will apologize.”

“Also fair.”

“Yes, I thought so. So. And if,” Dorian said, though his gaze and voice both drifted a little. He was quiet a moment, then looked back at Bull, meeting his eye.

“And if I say ‘how dare you’, you can kiss me again immedian. Imnd. Mmn. At once.”

Bull reached across the space between them and took Dorian’s hand. It was broad but aristocratic, long tapered fingers marked by calluses from wielding his staff in battle. Dorian’s hands were strong, elegant, and dwarfed by Bull’s.

“Deal,” he murmured, and stood up, tugging Dorian along with him.

“Deal,” Dorian echoed quietly, and they made their way up the stairs.

Bull got Dorian’s door open and was ready to bid the mage a final good night, but when it became clear Dorian was going to simply collapse, fully clothed, he was forced to linger. Krem called it ‘fussing’, or ‘mother hen’ing. Bull called it ‘making sure the people who were supposed to have his back weren’t totally useless the next day’.

Not that he and Dorian were scheduled to go into battle. They’d just gotten back from Crestwood, he figured they’d have a week or two before the next expedition. Still.

There was nothing sexy about getting Dorian out of his boots and robe, unfortunately. They were too complicated, and Dorian wasn’t especially helpful.

Although maybe it was a little sexy, when Bull finally got the last of the damned buckles undone on the finicky Teviner garment, and Dorian, who could barely lift his head in moments, made an alluringly boneless arch of his back to shrug out of it. Bull tucked that image away to revisit later.

There was a letter in the inside breast pocket of the robe, tucked into the lining, and Bull removed it and set it on the little vanity Dorian had constructed out of a reasonably clear mirror and a writing desk. It figured. The whole room seemed to echo the interests of its owner, actually. There was a large wardrobe shoved up in the corner, a bed considerably more opulent in its dressings than Bull’s, and books, stacks of them, on nearly every available surface save the ones Dorian’s grooming tools were set out on.

It made Bull smile a little.

He turned to find Dorian, barefoot and swaying, standing a little past the edge of the bed.

“Hey,” Bull said, “come on, back to bed. Drink that,” he added pointing to the elfroot and the water on the nightstand.

“Bull,” Dorian said softly, and his tone drew Bull’s focus immediately. Dorian was unquestionably drunk, but also plainly exhausted. The letter bore a Tevinter seal; it must have held enough significance that even without opening it, Dorian was affected. Bull would find out its contents eventually. In the moment, his primary concern was whatever quiet emotion had overtaken the ‘Vint.

“...thank you,” Dorian said, and Bull merely nodded. He gave it another moment, in case Dorian had more to say.

_Not that it matters. He won’t remember any of this. There’s nothing to be gained by staying here, anymore_ , Bull thought. Then Dorian lifted his hands to the Bull’s face and leaned up onto the balls of his feet, and kissed him.

It wasn’t insistent or prying, it wasn’t even sloppy. This was not a continuation of Dorian’s earlier, brief attempt at seduction. It was soft, careful. Bull had been a lot of things to a lot of people- humans, elves, dwarves alike- he had been a fixation, a scrape with the exotic, a fetish object, you name it. It didn’t bother him, being whatever someone needed in the moment. It usually yielded information, too, and if not, nothing wrong with scratching an itch of his own. In all the years he’d spent as a spy, though, as many times as he’d been used, or used sex as a tool, either of the trade or simply to alleviate a need, he knew immediately and instinctively that he had never once been kissed like this.

Dorian was right, Bull didn’t take advantage, not even of a mark, but he didn’t stop himself from cupping his hands lightly over Dorian’s hips, then sliding them up until they covered the man’s shoulders and a fair portion of his back. Bull barely returned it, hesitant to change the nature of the thing by responding too strongly one way or another. Dorian’s thumb traced lingeringly over Bull’s cheekbone, just beneath his good eye, and when Dorian broke the kiss it happened so slowly that their lips clung together for a moment. The room was silent, their breathing slow and deep, barely audible.

Dorian was, possibly, falling asleep on his feet. Without comment, Bull walked him the two steps back to the bed, and gently tipped him into it. The mage was out the instant his head hit the pillow, and Bull felt a fleeting regret that he hadn’t gotten him to down any of the water or elfroot. The hangover was going to be brutal.

He stood and watched for a minute, until he was satisfied Dorian was out and not likely to choke on his own vomit in the middle of the night. He somehow doubted the man had thrown up from drink in a very, very long time.

The hell. The hell had that kiss been about? The bargain was great, was easy enough to run with, would be hilarious the next day.

Bull decided he wouldn’t mention the rest of it. He couldn’t, not until he understood his own thoughts on the matter.

He drew a blanket over the mage’s sleeping form and left, and took the long way round the battlements back to his own room, foregoing joining the Chargers in favor of penning the report he’d put off since arriving back at Skyhold. It would be good to get everything that had happened in their last mission down on paper, ordered and organized. Almost everything, anyway. Everything relevant.

There were a few details he didn’t think bore mentioning. Not yet. He didn’t examine too closely  _why_ they didn’t. That would have meant admitting to himself that he simply didn’t want to share them.

When eventually the Iron Bull slept, it was restless and haunted, and when he rolled out of bed in the morning he went straight away to see if Ma’am wanted company for breakfast. She would set his head straight without needing to know a single detail of what was bothering him. That was what he needed. Simple. Straightforward.

Just what he needed.


	6. No One Ever Said

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god this is like 7k words and nothing happens I'm so sorry.

The Inquisitor took the Iron Bull to the Western Approach and left Dorian behind to puzzle over Venatori missives and some books that had been recovered from a site in Orlais. Watching the party head out the front gate, Dorian felt strangely detached. On the one hand, being parted from Bull was unpleasant. It had been maybe two months into their affair when he’d first recognized it, the very particular sort of yearning that came with missing a lover, doubled in its severity with the ache of missing a friend. Bull had become both, a wholly unanticipated development. It had made Dorian very unpleasant to be around the first time, snappish and surly, angry with himself for feeling so much, wanting more, having gotten himself into such a predicament in the first place.

And with a Qunari, no less.

This time there was an aspect of fear to it that he couldn’t shake. Nothing would happen to Bull in the Western Approach except a bright pink scar on his forearm from a Phoenix that he would happily show off upon returning. Dorian knew this, but it didn’t stop him from itching to be at the mercenary’s side, to protect him. It was a terrible restlessness to be faced with, and Dorian dealt with it the only way he knew how (that wasn’t whoring about in slum brothels, trying to drink away the crushing disappointment that came with the knowledge one was a crushing disappointment, oneself). The library became even more a second home than usual. If he skipped a meal here or there or went on little sleep for a day or two at a time, well, there was no one to harangue him about it, with Evelyn on the road. The only real disruptions were impromptu appearances from Cole, who had many questions and wished only to be helpful, of course, which made it only a little more difficult to send him away. Solas’ near constant presence in the rotunda, however, gave Dorian sufficient motivation.

Eight days into Bull’s absence, Dorian discovered a truly marvelous book about Elvhen Art and Artefacts, written by an Orlesian whose grammatical flourishes were nearly as offensive as their condescending tone. It was nothing short of impressively awful. There were twelve chapters on frescos. Dorian tossed it over the railing. The disgusted scoffs that eventually wafted up were music to his ears, and cheered him enough that he decided to forego taking dinner in his room and instead ventured to the tavern.

He was greeted by the slightest drop in volume, as several conversations were derailed by his entrance, and then a subsequent surge in the din. It wasn’t much, but it was noticeable. Not that he could blame them- his entrances tended to be noteworthy.

The mental quip didn’t do as much to help him tune out the snippets of muttered epithets or the low exchange of gossip as he would have liked. Dorian glided to the bar and flashed Cabot a perfunctory smile.

“Wine, please. The Northernmost originating vintage you have.”

“Just once, could your only criteria be a  _color_ ?” the dwarf grumbled, but turned to dig through a case beneath the bar. Dorian was sure he caught the words  _red or white_ and  _that damn complicated_ , but he didn’t press the bartender for additional engagement. The grumbling usually meant he had something of actual quality on hand. As Cabot hefted a bottle and reached for a glass, Dorian took a breath to ask what the kitchen was offering that evening. It caught hard in his lungs when an elbow and possibly part of a shoulder knocked him deliberately in the back, right between his shoulder blades.

He didn’t verbally react, didn’t allow himself to make a noise or even look behind him to discover the perpetrator; merely caught himself against the bar with the flat of his palms. It was a fleeting, superficial pain, one that brooked neither acknowledgement nor retribution. Not that he could have even if he’d wanted to. One false twitch and it would set a new standard of pub brawls for the ages. Dorian felt, more than saw, Cabot watching him, and after indulging an imperceptible, steadying breath, Dorian flashed him a smile that barely made it past his mustache, let alone to his eyes, nodding at the bottle the dwarf held.

“That will do.”

“You don’t want me to uncork it and let it breathe so you can sniff the bouquet first?” It was impossible to tell if this was sarcasm.

“No,” Dorian bit out, before letting out a silent sigh and shaking himself slightly. Smile back in place, he added, “Thank you.”

Cabot just nodded and set the bottle and a stemmed brass cup down. Dorian contemplated absconding with both of them back to library, when a shadow moved purposefully into his periphery.

Cremisius Aclassi was a difficult person to read. Krem was easygoing and open with his friends, and straightforward if reserved with everyone else, but with Dorian, he had been  _especially_ reserved; openly suspicious; and had visibly appraised Dorian at every given opportunity. It sent a very clear message, and it had taken some time- well into his and Bull’s affair- for Krem to arrive at a decision and allow Dorian into the fold.

Apparently, getting very drunk and (probably, Dorian still had no clear memory of the event) making an ass of himself had bought him some sympathy with the mercenary a good deal earlier than he’d managed the first time through.

“You didn’t say anything,” Krem said.

“To whom?” Dorian replied, canting an eyebrow. “My mystery assailant?”

“Only a mystery because you didn’t turn and face him. Everyone in here saw it, could tell you who it was.” Krem was doing the  _thing_ , the carefully neutral  _Not Hinting At My Personal Stance/The Correct Answer One Way Or The Other_ thing that he had doubtless learned from the Iron Bull.

“Well,” Dorian said, “I imagine it was a former Templar or visiting chevalier, given as either would be the most likely to feel confident enough in their abilities to tempt the abominable Magister’s wrath. In either case, answering so childish a prod with any show of force would only bring more ire directed my way. I can assure you, I have neither the time nor the inclination to cultivate that kind of headache.”

Dorian neatly uncorked the bottle and began to fill the cup, perhaps a bit higher than Cabot would have done. Krem shifted, crossing his arms over the edge of the bar.

“Don’t see it happen much. Someone taking a shot like that.”

“You wouldn’t. Usually when I’m here, so is the Iron Bull, or Varric. Or even Sera. The presence of any of the Inquisitor’s favorites tends to keep the people on their better behavior, I’ve found.”

“But not your presence?”

“The Inquisitor only likes me because I’m controlling her mind with blood magic,” Dorian said, mouth twisting into a bitter grimace of a smile, “or hadn’t you heard?”

The parallels between the rumors and accusations that had first floated around Skyhold of Dorian’s hold over the Inquisitor, and his father’s intentions for Dorian hadn’t escaped him. He had forgotten how bitterly they sat, however. So many other victories and pains had filled up the space between that time and the present, except it  _was_ the present, again, and Dorian’s head ached sometimes with the weight of the memories as they surfaced. Wine helped.

To Dorian’s surprise, Krem snorted.

“Yeah, I had. Didn’t seem likely though. The way you bitch about the cold, there’s now way she’d keep dragging you off to southern swamps if you were secretly running the show.”

Dorian watched Krem, eyes a bit round, before taking a sip of his wine.

Well, a ‘sip’.

“A well reasoned point,” he said once he’d swallowed, and Krem leaned away from the bar with a slight wave of his hand.

“Come on. You’re not a totally shit person, for an Altus.”

As glowing a review as any he’d received, Dorian thought, and followed Krem back to the Chargers’ table, where Skinner greeter them with a disgusted noise to rival one of Cassandra’s, and Dalish half stood from her seat to actually reach for Dorian’s arm. Before he’d managed to sit, she was telling him about the time someone had pinched one of her ears in a tavern in Orlais and had ended up with a knife in their own, courtesy of Skinner (who smiled wistfully at the memory and murmured “Good times,” against the rim of her cup).

Then Stitches volunteered a recounting of the time Rocky had demolished the hidden cellar of a merchant’s summer home in retaliation for some disparaging comments the man had made about the correlation between Rocky’s height and Rocky’s maximum potential blast radii. That was a little more difficult to follow, but by the time Skinner was purring her way through the time they had trussed a rival group’s captain up and left him in a vulnerable position in a cattle pen after he had made an unfortunate choice of words while badmouthing the Chief, Dorian got the gist.

They drank for a few hours, and he ate, and didn’t do much in the way of contributing to the conversation save the occasional well timed pithy remark or question. From the way Krem kept surreptitiously side-eying him, rather than staring at him blankly, Dorian rather thought he was passing the test.

It didn’t happen every night. Dorian kept it to about one in five. Even knowing how close they could-  _would_ become in time, Dorian feared overstaying his welcome.

He began to play chess with Cullen, finding he knew better how to coax the man from his dusty tower and piles of paperwork now than he had back when he’d still hoped to possibly tempt the commander into a dalliance. Which wasn’t to say his disinterest in doing so prevented him from flirting: It did not. It was far too rewarding to watch the flush crawl up from Cullen’s collar to his jaw and then spread across his cheeks like a rash. Dorian didn’t pretend to be anything other than a sore loser, and it was delightful to always have even a mild innuendo at the ready to exact his revenge against Cullen for winning. Anyway, it was something to do. Dorian needed as many distractions lined up as possible.

He filled the time.

The afternoon a roar went up through the lower courtyard, Dorian almost didn’t register it. Even with a small group on horseback taking the Imperial Highway, the ride to the Western Approach was one of several weeks and no faster coming back. He’d done nothing so sentimental as checking the days off on paper, but it had been nearly two months since the party’s departure. They must have pushed the horses very hard, he thought, and then the thought sank in and went through him like a bolt of lightning. Dorian dropped the text he’d been annotating and all but flung himself at the window, fingers pressing the glass like an excitable child’s, straining to catch a glimpse of-

There, dismounting, was Evelyn, Blackwall, Sera, and Bull. A smile broke across Dorian’s face, broader and more guileless than he’d allow anyone to witness, but in the private moment, his heart in his throat and his stomach fluttering with mingled relief and joy, it couldn’t be helped. The courtyard was swarming as the residents of Skyhold rushed to greet their Herald, and Dorian could spot Krem and Cullen both in the crowd hanging around the upper courtyard, waiting for the party to make their way up the stairs.

Dorian wanted nothing more than to rush down and shove through the throng, until he stood before the Iron Bull and could feel him alive and well with his own hands.

Instead, he stood at the window for another minute before forcing his hands to his sides and pulling in a few deep breaths. In good time.

He saw Evelyn first, and tutted at her while he fluttered his fingers through her hair to shake loose the many dunes’ worth of sand still in it. She laughed, and let him, and leaned against the window while Dorian sat in his chair to catch him up on everything they’d discovered.

“Erimond?” he repeated. “Livius Erimond. Yes. While I cannot say we are acquainted, I am, regrettably, aware of his existence. I believe we were at the same Circle for a time, but he’s some years older than I, and wouldn’t have had the guts to face me, besides.”

“Oh, no,” Evelyn mused, “was young Master Pavus a troublemaker?”

“Of considerable aptitude,” Dorian replied. “Erimond is in fact precisely the sort of boy I would have made trouble for. Insipid, grasping, jumped up opinion of his own abilities. Guaranteed a seat in the magisterium by virtue of his last name and no suitable siblings of a proper age. I cannot stress, Inquisitor, that I am in exactly zero ways surprised to hear his name among the ranks of the Venatori. I am only surprised he managed to climb so high.”

“Well, perhaps you can make up for the missed opportunity of your schoolhood days when we reach Adamant.”

“The Grey Warden fortress.”

“You know of it?”

“Not in any meaningful way,” Dorian said, which was skirting the truth a bit. “I know it used to be important, and that most of it burned down. Whatever is left of it will doubtless be all the more difficult to mount an assault against.”

“Yes,” Evelyn sighed, dragging her knuckle in a line across her forehead. “Cullen said much the same. We will have to make preparations.” Dorian went quiet, watching her, seeing the shadow of Haven pulling at her along with every other stress that came with her relatively new title. He reached out and rested his hand along her arm.

“We have time. Forewarning. It won’t be the same.” She lifted her head and Dorian’s hand tightened a little. Evelyn Trevelyan was a mere four years his junior, but there were moments she seemed infinitely younger. Though in fairness, Dorian thought, he was seeing her now from considerably more than four years ahead.

“No, it won’t be,” she said softly, and Dorian knew if she hadn’t been so desperately exhausted, there would have been a considerably harder edge to the words.

“We’re all here to support you. I’ll speak with Cullen and your spymaster in the morning about what needs looking into that would most benefit the army, and I’ll speak with Fiona about training up the mages for a siege. We will not walk into this unprepared.”

Evely blinked at him, then suddenly had her arms around his neck. She was hugging him. Dorian staunchly rejected the memory of an older Evelyn clinging to him with the same sort of urgency, as though there was too much to convey in words. She had been weeping. That would never happen. He returned the embrace.

“Yes, yes,” he murmured, “I know. ‘Oh Dorian, whatever would become of me were you not here to conduct all of this miserable, painstaking research?’ Why I’ve no idea, Lady Inquisitor, I cannot imagine being anywhere else. Except perhaps someplace warm, sunning myself and drinking a decent vintage. Alas, a life of glamor and luxury was never in the cards for me, despite what my pedigree might have furnished.”  He leaned back with a smile, knowing Evelyn’s hiccupped breath to be a laugh. He cupped her jaw.

“There, now. No need for such dramatics. Those rather fall under my purview.” She laughed and squeezed his hand with both of hers.  After some moments’ companionable silence, she left in the direction of the upper walk. He wondered if she would ultimately find herself by the stables or the barracks.

Dorian ultimately found himself in the doorway of the tavern, surprising no one, least of all himself. The crowd was so rowdy he’d heard the cacophony the moment he stepped from the stone hall out into the chill evening air. With the tavern door shut behind him, the noise was almost deafening. He caught snippets of conversation as he sauntered for the bar, unimpeded as much by most southerners’ aversion for him as his own skill at navigating a room. There was talk of the Wardens- much of it, all strongly opinionated- and there was talk of the Herald, and already stories from the Approach that Dorian highly doubted the validity of.

The Iron Bull’s laugh was almost a roar where it emanated from the far wall, and everything in Dorian twisted itself into knots with impatience and longing. Doubtless the source of the more outlandish and colorful rumors, the Bull and his Chargers were holding court. Dorian picked out the words  _was a fucking phoenix_ , and redoubled his will to not so much as glance toward the company until he had something to imbibe in his hands. He made it to the bar and took the ale Cabot handed him, knowing better than to ask for something finer by the bartender’s subtly harried manner. When he turned, Dalish was already standing on the bench and holding a hand toward him, fingers curving in an encouraging gesture. Krem didn’t look as enthusiastic, but he did  _nod_ , and anyway looked more welcoming than Skinner did.

Bull was looking directly at Dorian, and grinned at him broadly. Dorian lifted his tankard in tribute before pulling a deep swallow of the cold, hoppy brew, and wandered over just far enough to fall within shouting range, standing at the far end of the table from Bull.

“A triumphant return from what I’ve been told was essentially the Fallow Mire, only filled with sand and poisonous gasses!”

Bull laughed, horns tipping back, and Dorian risked a glance at the Qunari’s throat and chest before ratcheting his eyes back up to the Bull’s face.  _Damn_ .

“Yeah, it was a miserable death trap. Can’t wait to go back. You should  _see_ the shit they’ve got running around those sand dunes.”

“As long as it isn’t bears,” Dorian said.

“Better. Varghests-” Bull said, almost dismissively, before inhaling, clearly building the dramatic tension for a moment, before planting his elbow on the table top hard enough to rattle the Chargers’ drinks, arm flexed, and growling, “-and  _phoenixes_ .”

A long, wicked curve of scar tissue ran along Bull’s bicep, shiny and recently healed. Dorian canted an eyebrow.

“That’s barely a scratch for you.”

Bull drew himself back a little, nearly- Dorian would swear by any number of gods- pouting.

“It’s not deep, but it’s artful! Look how smooth that is, do you know how sharp a claw has to be to get a cut that smooth?”

“It is very pink,” Dorian allowed, and Bull brightened again, instantly. Krem looked faintly harassed.

“It is!” Bull agreed, and lifted the massive oak stein he was drinking from. The other Chargers, not caring if they were toasting a color so long as they were toasting  _some_ thing, all echoed the gesture and shouted different variations of  _to Chief’s artful new pink scar_ .

Dorian laughed and lifted his own tankard in kind, then drank deeply from it. Bull watched him as he did, and Dorian swallowed more than he’d meant to simply for the relief of blocking that intense gaze with the rim of his cup.

He had a few more. There was singing. He managed to abstain from that, at least.

While the night was still in full swing for the Chargers but reaching a downward turn for everyone else, Dorian slipped away. It would have been all too easy to get pulled in by the lively warmth of the mercenaries, sinking deeper into the fold until he was at Bull’s side, and then there would have been no refusing another several rounds and, subsequently, no telling what ridiculous, embarrassing nonsense Dorian would manage. He idly considered what sort of bet would have to be lost to warrant some  _light discipline_ , and was so embarrassed and turned on by the thought that he cursed at himself aloud and scrubbed a hand roughly over his face.

“Careful, ‘Vint, you’ll spook the guards.”

Dorian startled at Bull’s voice and turned, only realizing once he had that his feet had taken him up the stone steps and half way round the battlements rather than back to his room; had, in fact, taken him to _Bull’s_ room, give or take several yards. The door was open and the room behind the Iron Bull’s bulky form was dark, lit dimly by one lantern and a low-banked fire. Not that Dorian could see them. He was simply aware.

“Possibly you should take your own advice into consideration.”

“Did I scare you?” Bull purred with easy amusement and Dorian felt his hackles go up like a cat caught in a sudden downpour.

“ _No_ ,” he responded tartly, and when it was clear no additional barb was coming, Bull laughed.

“Oh, good,” Bull said. “Wouldn’t want that. You looking for a nightcap?”

“The opposite,” Dorian replied, too heated to be effectively cool or nonchalant. He sounded prissy to his own ears, and despaired. “There’s much to be done to prepare for our next journey to the Western Approach, and as diverting as tonight’s welcome back party was, I’d like to go to sleep with a clear head.”

"I could divert you a little longer,” Bull offered, and Dorian resisted the urge to swat at him.

“That’s hardly a solution. Anyway, you’re drunk.”

“A little, yeah,” Bull agreed. Dorian rolled his eyes against a surge of fondness, and said, “Good _night_ , Bull,” but found a massive hand caught gingerly around his wrist before he could pass the doorway and make again for the stairs down to the courtyard.

“Could’ve used you and those barriers of yours out there.”

“Come now, the Iron Bull,” Dorian drawled, “it sounds almost as though you missed me.”

“Well, now, let’s not get carried away,” Bull said, grinning slowly. Dorian laughed.

“Oh,  _no_ , we musn’t.” The moment was perfectly amicable, until it stretched a heartbeat too far into silence and Dorian felt his smile falter. He dropped his gaze, unable to maintain holding Bull’s, and lifted his free hand between them to run a fingertip along the raised pinkish skin on Bull’s bicep.

“Just a scratch, Dorian,” Bull murmured, and Dorian withdrew his hand, nodding.

“Mmn. Well, next time, no new scars.”

“Awe, don’t be spiteful.” Bull’s shortened fingers loosened on Dorian’s arm, stroked subtly over the place his sleeve gave way to his bare wrist.

“Just playing to type.”

_Do not climb on him_ , Dorian told himself firmly.  _Do not. Do. Not._ He was staring, he knew, but it could scarcely be helped. There was so much of Bull to stare at. They seemed to sway vaguely toward each other, an unsteadiness not related to drink, and Dorian felt the brush of the Qunari’s knuckles over the fabric at his hip, and started.

“Welcome back, Bull,” Dorian said, more breathlessly than he meant to and a bit faster, as well, “get some rest.” He slipped his arm from Bull’s loose grip and turned, taking the stairs as smoothly as he could manage while maintaining a healthy clip. Bull let him go. Dorian wondered if he’d find someone else to take to bed. Probably, he thought.

Sleep came no more easily that night than it had any of the weeks’ past.

Skyhold seemed fuller with the return of the Inquisitor and the Bull, but it very quickly began to empty again. Leliana’s people went first to scout ahead and secure points along the road where provisions could be acquired and managed. Cullen was in constant motion preparing their troops for mobilization. The rumors of the demonic nature of the army they’d be up against had the former Templars spectacularly on edge, but then, so was every southerner who’d ever gaped with awe over some tale of the Grey Wardens (which Dorian rather thought was most of them).

Blackwall’s stoicism lent itself to feigning obliviousness to the looks thrown his way, more suspicious than they previously had been.  _The dangers of hero worship_ , Dorian mused, though once in the tavern when they happened to make eye contact, he caught a brief spark of something uncomfortably like kinship. It wasn’t particularly satisfying, however much misery loved company. Dorian knew Blackwall would have darker glances and sharper words to weather before long.

They were given some reprieve from the whispers and the growing tension. Evelyn couldn’t abide the waiting, for all that she exuded patience and watchfulness, and so there were forays to the countryside, to seal rifts and court favor. Dorian was not always brought along, but invariably, when he was, the Iron Bull was also. Dorian was grateful, internally. Outwardly, he was the  _worst_ .

“Dear Diary,” Dorian began, their last of four evenings in the Hinterlands, having tracked down an magical artefact of great interest to Solas, who was well away from the fire and contemplating the stars. Evelyn was out of her armor and playing with a palmful of veilfire, fascinated.

The Iron Bull was penning something into a worn leather booklet. Dorian had an inkling as to what the notes might be for. It was rare for Bull to write when they were on the road. Most frequently, he would spend the evening cleaning and sharpening weapons, or oiling the leather of his pauldron and belt. Dorian could vividly picture rising and going to tuck up against Bull’s side, tease the pen from his fingers, distract him away from his writing- but he had never done so when they were on the road, would not have dared. So he banished the fantasy memory and opted to provoke, instead.

“Today we found yet another dragon the Inquisitor won’t allow me to ride, as well as some particularly elven ancient magic. Sure it’s nothing to worry about much. P.S., world still ending. Love and kisses, the Iron Bull.”

“Didn’t know you were a mind reader, Dorian,” Bull grinned, glancing up from the page. Dorian smirked back.

“I’m not. Your atrocious handwriting is reflected in the metal of that humongous eye patch.”

“Watching me awfully close, aren’t you?”

“No more closely than you are us,” Dorian said, and managed not to cringe at himself.

“Nah,” Bull said, unbothered, “I already wrote the Ben-Hassrath about you, Dorian. Told them all the pertinent information: Necromancer from Quarinus, complains more than any human previously encountered, fastidious mustache, ass like marble.”

“Next time you must include a sketch,” Dorian returned, tone bright if a little sharp, “perhaps I can be the first  _bas saarebas_ to be honored in Par Vollen with a statue. Marble will do, if bronze is unavailable.”

“I’ll let the Ben-Hassrath know your preference.”

“Leliana’ll have an enjoyable time going over  _that_ missive,” Evelyn murmured, and Dorian found himself laughing.

Bull flirted brazenly, and Dorian rebuffed him caustically, and knew as well as Bull did that it was now part of a game they were playing, though Bull had no real concept of the stakes. On the road, away from Skyhold and the Inquisitor’s legions, it was so much easier for Dorian to let himself indulge. When they were back in the Herald’s Rest, it meant he had to watch himself that much more closely. Their friends were helpful distractions in that regard- he’d finally baited Sera into a word game, and had begun to tease Cassandra about the wealth of truly awful romantic poetry from Tevinter she had so far been shielded from.

When Adamant was at last upon them, he felt blindsided with it. Nevermind that Dorian had been pouring over glyphs, aiding their enchanters and smithies alike in the procurement and implementation of runes (and Dumat’s  _bones_ , when was Dagna going to arrive?), doing his part and then some to ready to the troops and the Inquisitor. When she told him they would leave four days hence, it took him nearly a full minute to lift his head from the page he’d been scrawling on.

“Four… oh. And then we-”

“Will ride ahead of Cullen and the rest of the main force which isn’t already on the move. I want to see what’s happening on the Exalted Plains, apparently there’s-”

“No,” Dorian said, then realized it had been out loud. He winced at her surprise.

“Please? Bad enough we’re dealing with a Grey Warden demon army led by a Tevinter Magister, do we really have to stack petulant, warring Orlesians on top of it all? Aren’t things unpleasant enough as is?”

“I sort of like the idea of making it worse by choice, rather than just waiting for the next wave of awful to come,” she murmured to the ceiling, and Dorian stood, moved to sit beside her, which was horrendously uncomfortable given the width of the chair and surprised her a fair deal.

“Well, when you put it that way,” he said, tucking an arm about her. She smiled and leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder and relaxing somewhat.

Dorian hadn’t been anywhere near so tactile with her, not so soon in their acquaintance. He had been too afraid of the consequences, of misreading the sincerity or depth of her offered friendship. He knew better, now, and moreover knew when the rumor mongering reached a peak, she would stand for him. There remained a buzzing in the back of his mind, familiar anxiety that sat over old wounds like sap along the breaks in a tree. Strong enough as sutures went, but unmistakably the remnants of a trauma. He would still be careful, but he knew her too damn well not to reach out, now, when he saw her flagging.

“So, swing by the Exalted Plains, pop in and check on the warring Lions, then off to Adamant for a bit of world saving.”

“See, when you phrase it that way it hardly sounds like anything,” Evelyn pointed out, and earned a chuckle from Dorian.

“Fine. You know there are supposed to be hot springs in the Exalted Plains?” Evelyn’s eyes lit with curiosity. One of many charming qualities bred in southern mages by dint of locking them in towers their whole lives was that they hadn’t seen a damn thing of the world. It still shocked Dorian to consider.

“Yes, filled with noxious gasses and wyverns.”

She huffed and slouched in the chair, dragging Dorian somewhat down with her, and they had to extricate and calm themselves when Helsima craned around the corner to inquire as to the source of their seeming distress.

The forward party was larger than they usually assembled for field work. Evelyn led Dorian, Sera, Blackwall, Solas and the Bull out before the sun quite broke the horizon, which meant the first several hours of riding Dorian spent creaking wordlessly and with great malice at anyone who dared attempt to strike up conversation with him. His mood hadn’t been helped by the appearance of Cole that morning, perched on the end of Dorian’s bed with his legs crossed.

The jolt of alarm had woken Dorian up far better than any messenger could have, regardless of how strong the tea they brought with them. The spirit had traced his fingers over the rounded top of one of the bed’s posts.

“You don’t want me to come. But I want to go. I want to help.”

“I know you do,” Dorian told him, scrubbing both hands over his face. “I’m just not certain… the veil will be very thin there, Cole. I don’t think you’ll like it.”

“The Fade thins, fractures, but at Adamant it gathers. They will fall into it. You saw it happen, bt it hasn’t yet.”

“Sort of,” Dorian mumbled, dragging himself and half of his blankets up and out of the bed.

“But will it still?” Cole asked, a different worry threading his tone, different than the usual concern for the wellbeing of everyone in a several mile radius. Dorian poured himself a glass of water from the beaten metal pitcher he kept by the windowsill, which meant it stayed cold.

“...I think it must,” Dorian answered, feeling drawn. Cole was quiet as Dorian drank the water, before saying softly, “I… understand. I think.”

“I cannot warn her. You see why? Saying something might change it, and then-”

“Memory. It will give her back something important, something she lost and something she needs.”

“Yes, Cole.”

“You must let it happen.”

Dorian sighed through the sudden pressure in his chest, as though a band had been tightened around his ribs.

“I don’t believe I have so much control, nor would I wish it. But yes, I suppose.”

“I will follow but I will not fall into the Fade. I do not  _want_ to. I will try to help and not to change things.”

“I cannot ask you to do anything more than respect the privacy of my thoughts and keep what you have gleaned from me with discretion, to yourself.”

“Yes, Dorian,” Cole said, and when Dorian turned to thank him the room was empty. He still felt rather at a loss.

They cleared the foothills by midday, the ride more or less uneventful, which led to Sera and Bull taking their nervousness out on each other by telling increasingly sordid, awful jokes and seeing who could make Blackwall crack. Sera managed this far better than Bull did, and every time the stoic, bearded identity thief broke into a gust of genuine laughter, Evelyn turned her head back to watch them and smiled. It concerned Dorian deeply, if only because she was  _so_ young, and would not, he knew, wind up in the man’s exceptionally burly arms. Which meant at some point, her infatuation was quelled. Dorian had missed it, but now it was just one more potential source of ulcer. What did Blackwall do to nip her affections in the bud? The man was clearly devoted, damn near besotted, even. It would happen well before the truth came out in Orlais, though, so how-

“Dorian, are you all right?”

Dorian shook himself vaguely and looked imperiously over at Bull, who sat astrid his massive Orlesian Charger with an ease that didn’t suit a man so large riding a beast so wide. It was all wrong.

“What?”

“You were pretty deep in your own thoughts, there, big guy.”

Dorian bristled out of sheer habit.

“Yes, Andraste forbid one dedicates one’s time to actual thought when one could be making lewd jokes.”

“You make pretty good ones,” Bull offered, tone conciliatory, and Dorian answered with a flat look.

“Hey Dorian, you ever heard of a Tevinter Tickler?” Sera called, and Bull chuckled as Dorian rolled his eyes severely.

“That’s not a real thing, Sera.”

“Tell me it’s not, got one growing right out your face.”

 “ _Sera_.”

 Up ahead, the Inquisitor nearly laughed herself off her horse.

They made camp briefly, to heat porridge and mulled wine to fortify them for the second leg of the day’s journey. Evelyn asked Blackwall for more word on Adamant, ostensibly out of concern for tactics, but when Blackwall seemed hesitant to delve too deeply into the subject, Sera happily took over, catching Evelyn’s attention with a tale of a Warden riding a griffon into a maleficar’s stronghold to rescue all the beautiful women he’d planned to use as tribute, only to find them in his thrall and unwilling to ride the majestic creature to safety (Sera’s wording was not quite so succinct).

“Blood magic?” Evelyn asked, voice theatrically hushed and eyes shining with the unadulterated pleasure she rarely displayed, when she was safe with her closest, trusted friends.

“Worse,” Sera said, leaning forward, eyes wide and tone dire, “the  _Tevinter Tickler_ .”

“Oh, really,” Dorian murmured, sighing heavily as Blackwall erupted into laughter that nearly drowned out Sera’s braying.

“All right, if this is a  _Tevinter Tickler_ , what’s Blackwall have, then? The  _Free Marcher Chimney Brush,_ guaranteeing the best scrubbed stacks you’ve ever had? Or the  _Warden Whisk,_ perhaps; more bristles than you can know what to do with, but of rather limited use.”

The look of shock on Blackwall’s face and surprise on Sera’s (probably at the fact that Dorian knew what brooms were) were nothing compared to Evelyn’s choked off laugh and bright red cheeks, and Bull’s full, booming laugh. The giant lummox actually slapped his knee as he rocked with laughter. Dorian tried to look haughty and unperturbed, or at least  _smug_ , but ended up huffing a laugh of his own as he glanced sidelong at the Iron Bull, and smiled too shyly for his taste; too pleased to have pleased the Bull.

Blackwall was busy gruffly deflecting Sera’s sudden barrage of questions about  _whisks_ and  _whisking_ and the wrist movements involved, but Bull managed to get an eye on Dorian. He saw the smile. In all honesty, Dorian didn’t do much to hide it.

“See?” Bull rumbled, reaching over to clap a hand over Dorian’s shoulder and squeeze, once, “knew you had it in you.”

“You’re a horrific influence,” Dorian snorted, trying not to look any more pleased.

“Yeah? How you feeling about pinstripes these days?”

“ _Those_ are  _not pinstripes,_ you incorrigible savage.”

The ire wasn’t completely manufactured, on that point. Dorian would rend the fabric of the world itself down around their ears to protect Bull, but if those olive and mauve monstrosities didn’t survive the effort, well, surely he couldn’t be faulted for their demise.

He could be if he set them on fire. Still, the temptation lingered.

They ate and rode out on a collective second wind, though Dorian had doomed himself to explaining to Sera the finer points of sartorial care and what exactly a whisk broom was for over the course of several hours. They camped again after the sun was well down and the moons had risen, and as they settled into their bed rolls Dorian heard Bull chuckle and mutter, “the  _Warden Whisk_ ,” under his breath.

They journeyed to the outskirts of the Exalted Plains and were given a brief history lesson by Solas which resulted in Evelyn being unable to speak the name of the place without her mouth twisting into a distasteful grimace. Dorian couldn’t blame her for the sentiment, although he didn’t think the showing of it would go over especially well with the Orlesians. Two rifts and one demon-infested rampart and they had enough information that Evelyn could be dragged away.

“You got your own people waiting on you, boss,” Dorian overheard Bull telling her. “We’ve got to press on. We’ll come back. They’ve got to hold on til then. Not every fight can be yours the minute you come across it.”

“Oh, yes,” Evelyn sighed, her voice like a dry wind skirting the wastes, “I wouldn’t want to wind up losing an eye.”

Bull grunted in response, one of a category of grunts Dorian knew to mean  _Point to You but I’m Not Thrilled About It_ . He felt exceptionally proud of their Inquisitor.

Other than the festering pockets of demons and the occasional rift that would split the air around them and require their immediate attention, and the frequent altercations with bandits and, thankfully, less frequent altercations with Red Templars, it was quite a nice journey. It became warmer as they moved toward the desert, at least in the day. Dorian made a point to strip away bits of his robe during the hottest hours. If Bull could ride around bare chested, Dorian could certainly let his shoulders breathe. If he noticed Bull watching him enjoy the sun, he gave no sign. Save that he began to undo the length of his vest and let it fall open as they rode.

He wanted to tan evenly, after all.

The nights once they reached the Approach were freezing, as bad as any they’d experienced in the Frostbacks, only instead of snow it was piles of sand and, in the distance, the murky glow of what Blackwall immediately picked out as the  _fires of war_ .

Camps encroached upon the fortress, which loomed in the dark as an absence, a place in the sky the stars simply were not. Along the ramparts oil was burning, and the acrid smell and slick smoke that curled up into the sky only increased Dorian’s sense of unease.

The Inquisitor, Solas, and Blackwall would, in a few days’ time, step into the Fade. They would return again- though Hawke would not. Dorian didn’t look forward to the pervasive sadness that would settle into their resident storyteller and last the rest of the war. Varric was a liar, and was quite good at subverting his own sentimentality, but Hawke’s death would not be something he could shake. The Fade would give Evelyn answers she wasn’t sure she wanted. No one would walk away unscathed.

“You look tired, ‘Vint.” Bull lumbered across the sand to stand beside Dorian. It meant he was being approachable and friendly. Bull could saunter his way across lava without making a sound, if he wished it.

“What a rude thing to say,” Dorian returned mildly.

“Not looking forward to this one?”

Dorian scoffed.

“I’m not quaking in my massive boots over it,” he said, giving Bull a pointed sideways glance, “but no, I cannot say I am especially looking forward to tomorrow. It will be… a very long fight. I know Cullen is prepared, and I will not leave the Inquisitor’s side unless she asks it of me, we are all resolved, it’s just….”

“Demon army?” Bull said.

“Demon army,” Dorian repeated wearily. “They don’t tire the way they should. Oh, well.” He turned, intending to walk back for their shared tent, but paused at Bull’s expression. His gaze was fixed on the dark blot of Adamant out over the dunes. Bull wasn’t shy about expressing his dislike of demons, or even magic, but he did not readily share is  _fear_ , and it was an old fear, Dorian thought, though not one he had the story of.

“Bull,” Dorian said gently, lifting a hand to rest it just along the curve of Bull’s elbow. It caught the Qunari’s attention away from his thoughts and the battle ahead, and placed it fully onto Dorian.

“...Don’t worry,” he told hulking mercenary, “I’ll protect you.”

It surprised Bull more than it had Evelyn, but he, very much like she had, seemed to perceive Dorian’s sincerity.

“Hey,” Bull protested, “who’s the one running head first into these guys, huh?”

“Oh, yes! And who keeps telling you  _not_ to?”

“Ah, don’t be a killjoy. And anyway. You already protect me.”

It was Dorian’s turn to be surprised, and he drew himself slightly up, blinking rapidly, the heat of embarrassment and pleasure pricking at his neck.

“Barriers hardly count.”

“They count more than you might think,” Bull said, and lifted a hand to coast the back of his knuckles in a brief line down Dorian’s sternum, where Dorian’s breath caught.

“Tell you what, ‘Vint. I’ll protect you, too.”

“You’ll be far too busy swinging a giant piece of metal into barely corporeal nightmare creatures.”

The Iron Bull laughed and let his hand drop, catching Dorian’s hip in a brief squeeze.

“You sure know how to make a guy feel useful.’

"Kaffas, Bull, I didn’t mean-”

“No, it’s okay,” Bull murmured, and didn’t remove his hand. It stayed a warm, grounding weight. “I think I get it.”

Old habits were so terribly hard to break.

“Bull,” Dorian murmured, but then Sera was calling across the camp. More were arriving- from the voices, Dorian could make out Varric and Hawke, and Leliana and Cassandra, whom Varric was baiting, and the Iron Bull let his hand fall and drew away.

“War party’s all here,” he said, flashing Dorian a smile that was sharp but not unfriendly. Dorian took a deep breath and held it, and did not look back at Adamant again, then followed Bull back to the ring of firelight and the company of his comrades.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuse for this this chapter is filler have some UST and some pining and some background characters and some beard jokes and then uuuuuh we'll get to Adamant in SOONER THAN A MONTH FROM NOW. I SWEAR IT.
> 
> I actually wrote a novel with a friend and it's been bought by a publisher so that plus work has been, like.. there's some stuff going on. But that is NO EXCUSE. So. next update won't be in like two months. I promise. I swear. You can hit me with the demon stick to spur me on, which your comments have also done, thank you so much everyone who reads this.
> 
> This chapter totally unbeta'd, like so beyond unbeta'd, I just hadda get this up there. May edit copiously at a later date.


	7. Coming Back As We Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heeeey it's the Fade.

Adamant was a nightmare, so much so that even with his foreknowledge, Dorian couldn’t appreciate the pun. It began the moment they breached the walls: a dread that settled over him like a film, throwing a grim haze over the frantic combat that spilled out from the walls. It might have been purely in his head, or perhaps a sensitivity of his magic which had developed along with his skill and _experiences_ , such as they were,since his first fray in the ancient Warden fortress. The place reeked of death, and the veil was thin to the point of distraction. He didn’t know if anyone else felt it. There wasn’t time to ask, and he hardly wanted to draw attention.

Things went wrong quickly. It was the pride demon, supported by a maleficar and two shrieking despairs demons, that did it. Moreover, it was Dorian’s fault, and he knew it the moment the fight turned. 

Bull threw himself forward to protect Evelyn, and in that moment the demons of despair had turned their force on him at once, and Evelyn was protected but the Iron Bull was not. He thrummed with a radiating violence, the energy of the reaver pouring off of him in waves, ready to take any blow thrown at him in that moment, but despair had no blunt force to offer, only impossible, breath stealing, blood vessel bursting cold; and Dorian reached out to _stop_ them, throwing up a protective wall of flames, stopping the path of the demonic ice and driving the pride demon, even, back and away. It screamed.

It then spun and raked its massive claws across Cassandra’s front before she had time to heft her shield.

Vivienne was with the Circle mages, leading them alongside Cullen’s soldiers and former templars. Evelyn had no mana to expend on healing, not matching the maleficar spell for spell and then sundering his demons as Blackwall and the Iron Bull took turns hammering them down into splinters and viscera.

Dorian reached Cassandra moments after Solas had knelt beside her, lines of his face drawn taut over the dramatic angles of his cheeks and brow.

“It is dire,” he said. “I can sustain her. Go with the Inquisitor.”

_No_ , Dorian thought, the momentum that carried him through each of their battles coming up against a wall of guilt and confusion.

“I don’t-”

“It is a battle. It was not your doing. You will only be at fault if you fail to act, now,” Solas told him, no patience in the words, only decisiveness and urgency. “ _Go_.”

Dorian nodded dumbly and went, sending a burst of purple ether up in the path they’d cut behind them to let their soldiers- and healers- know it was safe to press ahead.

“Solas?” Evelyn asked, turning from forcing a restorative potion into Blackwall’s hands.

“Is with Cassandra. She is wounded, but she’ll live. He’ll see to it.”

The two mages stood silently for a moment, and Dorian knew they were both afraid, but neither dared show it. Evelyn nodded and started forward, and Bull shot Dorian a sideways glance as he followed.

“What happened?!” Sera demanded, skittering down a half crumbled rampart, nimbly keeping apace along the perforated tops of the portcullis they raced along.

“Pride demon. She’ll be fine,” Bull said, and Sera made a feral sound of frustration.

“Stupid demon _stupidness_ ,” she growled, and Bull hummed in agreement so low Dorian only felt the sound.

The colors of the Wardens became a blur, blue and silver twisting into the cracked black shape of demonic limbs. Abominations erupted from the field of battle like rotting geysers of flesh suddenly limned with lightning or flame or fear. In the scattered moments between skirmishes, they dug haphazardly through any stores they could find, knowing they were far from done, needing any aid they could scrounge and carry. A singularly providential cache was stuffed to the brim with glass bottles.

Dorian grimaced as he downed a bottle of lyrium, potent and clean, of high quality. It was sharp tasting, and made his mouth feel strange, a humming in his lips like the warble thunder sent through glass. He let the bottle fall to the flagstones and shatter, and when he lifted his head found the Iron Bull was watching him grimly. 

“Not my favorite vintage,” Dorian managed with a flippancy that had carried him through worse scrapes than Adamant, surely. Bull canted his horns at an angle, as close to amused as he was likely to look under the circumstances.

“This is all done, I’ll buy you a flask of something decent.”

“What better motivation to stay alive?” Dorian replied.

Livius was as insufferable and puffy faced as Dorian remembered him to be, and he managed to get a sneering word of greeting in, which was a small satisfaction, though interrupted by the abrupt arrival of the archdemon.

Before, this had been where he’d stayed, desperately casting spell upon spell to stem the tide of demons until Evelyn could return. Now, as the fight swelled up in earnest and she ran for the stairs, her shout of, “Dorian! Bull!” drew him without hesitation or thought. Sera was already darting ahead of them, loosing arrows and flinging glass flagons and small jars off her belt and into the corridor ahead.

Dorian did not know this part of the keep as he had never seen it before. Demons erupted from the very mortar, it felt, and then, of course, there was the matter of the blighted dragon.

“Cover!” Dorian yelled, throwing himself against a stone pillar as he cast a wall of a barrier in front of Sera and the Bull. They fell back, and the fire billowed around them, leaving them unburnt. Evelyn had tucked herself securely into a nook of mostly broken rock, and the moment the dragon had passed their position pulled herself out of it and ran ahead. They followed. It was a gruelling pace to cast at, and Dorian was grateful that he had significant experience doing so under his belt. There was no room for faltering, yet so many opportunities.

Case in point, Commander Clarel’s farewell. He had to hand it to the woman, ripping open the fabric of the world as a final _screw you_ certainly had its appeal- at least, he was in no position to judge. It was a fair shot at ending the dragon, as well, only it didn’t, and the lurch he felt as the bridge shuddered and broke away, crumbling downward toward the abyss, was startlingly familiar. It was not dissimilar to what he’d felt when he finally understood what it was his father had intended for him.

The noise of it was too great to hear anything else. Dorian twisted as he fell, grabbing uselessly for anything to hold onto and stop his descent, for even the chance to gather himself long enough to cast one last, potentially useless, barrier. The green glow of the rift flickered into life below them, and Dorian thought _Oh, I’m going into the Fade, now_ , and then he did.

Intellectually, he understood precisely what had happened and, admittedly less precisely, where they were. Unfortunately, the Fade did not care one whit for the intellectual. Dorian had difficulty pulling his gaze from the sky, such as it was, even as Sera indulged in rather vulgar hysterics. The landscape was too vivid, too _real_ , and even as the exhilaration welled of being physically there, actually existing wholly in the place his magic _came_ from, the doubts came flooding in.

After all, the last Tevinter mage to enter the Fade, that anyone knew of, was currently wreaking havoc on the world in his efforts to achieve godhood. There was a certain precedent his countrymen had set, however many thousands of years ago they had, that Dorian was keenly aware of. Also, if his lengthy discussions with Evelyn-of-his-once-past-now-future were still accurate, they were about to encounter the closest thing to the personification of primal, unquenchable fear that existed. Not just a fear demon. A true Nightmare. Listening to her recount the experience had been fascinating, but it hadn’t instilled Dorian with a desire to experience it first hand.

Oh, well.

“What she said,” Bull muttered as Sera gave up the litany of cursing.

Dorian oriented himself and wandered closer to the group as they found their footing. Evelyn looked steadier than Dorian would have anticipated, but then, she rarely gave anything away in the field. 

“Was it like this?” Hawke was asking her, and Evelyn’s hands tightened on her staff.

“I don’t remember.”

“The first time I entered the Fade it looked like a lovely castle filled with gold and silks,” Dorian offered, satisfied when Evelyn turned away from the uncanny landscape and swirling vortex in the sky to look at him. “I met a marvelous desire demon, as I recall. We chatted and ate grapes before he attempted to possess me.”

Evelyn’s expression screwed up slightly on one side and the Bull growled in the back of his throat.

“Mine didn’t bring grapes,” she said.

“Was it a desire demon?” Dorian prompted.

“No,” Evelyn mumbled, looking vaguely put out. Stroud cleared his throat.

“In our world, the rift the demons came through was nearby. In the main hall. Can we escape the same way?”

Evelyn breathed out quietly but for quite a long time, and she clenched her marked hand briefly before shaking it out.

“I suppose we ought to find out.”

“ _Great_ ,” Sera said.

“Varric’s going to be so cranky over this,” Hawke said, sounding pleased, and Dorian did not look at the Champion for fear his expression might give something away.

“This is shitty,” Bull groused as they moved forward. “And you could at least try to act like you’re not enjoying yourself.”

“Me?” Dorian asked, mock affronted. “Of course I’m not. There’s hardly any use in throwing a tantrum, though, is there? We are here, and we must find our way through.”

“I’ll kill whatever the boss puts in front of me, but I didn’t sign up to go slogging through the ass end of demon town.”

“Just the ass end of every other corner of the South?” Dorian snipped. “Focus on the task ahead. On getting Evelyn back to the fight. Ignore everything else.”

Bull regarded him silently, and didn’t stop scowling, but he did take a few longer strides to make sure he was standing at Evelyn’s right hand.

“What about me,” Sera demanded, falling into step beside Dorian.

“What _about_ you?”

“Say something encouraging and distracting from the demony awful bad place to me!”

“...Plaidweave and bad haircuts are natural repellents against demonic forces.”

Sera gaped silently for a moment, fingers curling and readjusting around her bow.

“...For real?”

“No,” Dorian told her, and she fell into another cursing fit and stalked ahead.

The Fade was strange. Dorian, Hawke and Evelyn seemed more aware of it than their compatriots, of the way the landscape kept shifting, a little. Tweaking itself, just a little, as they passed. Other reactions were stronger: items appearing from nowhere, spirits rising from the… well, ‘rock’, for lack of a more complete term. Their physical presence was a disruption, one that would, Dorian knew, bring an increase of attention their way. Evelyn was drawn to all of it, and when she found the first scrap of paper she paled substantially and her jaw tightened like a vice.

“Insquisitor?” Stroud asked, but it was Dorian she looked to when she raised her head, and he realized with a mild sense of panic he didn’t know what this was about. He went to her side and stood close, frowning, and she pushed the letter against his chest.

"What-” He skimmed it. _Light my final hours_ , it read, _Let me go to the Maker without the terrors-_

“Damn,” he murmured, handing it back to her. “Inquisitor, we might not have the _time_ -”

He stopped when their eyes met and stifled a sigh, nodding. Leave it to Evelyn to find lost souls to help just lying around the raw damned Fade. She found a candle and lit it, and the glow was overbright, for the size of the flame. Hawke and Stroud seemed to take it all in stride, but Sera was scowling. Dorian could understand why.

“Here, look at this,” Evelyn said, beckoning Dorian over again as she turned some new parchment over in her hands. “It- the letters keep changing.”

“That’s Tevene,” Dorian blinked, leaning over her shoulder.

“No, it’s- truly, you see Tevene? I can read it,” she mused.

“Hey, boss, as much fun as it is watching you two collect shit for your scrapbook-” Bull started but Dorian was too engrossed to heed his tone.

“This is written by a Magister! Callistus the Fade-Touched- well, not her official title, obviously- do you know how rare a writing this is? I don’t know what it could be doing here, but-”

The page shimmered and winked out of existence with a strangely metallic noise, and the imprint of it in the air seemed to rush through Evelyn’s chest, causing her to suck in a sharp breath. No one moved.

“....maybe let’s not touch anything else,” Dorian said, stilted, and Sera shouted, “ _No fucking joke._ ”

The rule held fast until they found the eluvian, and a shadow of unease rippled coldly through Dorian’s frame. Bull was standing two bodies removed from him, but still looked over.

“Don’t,” Dorian said sharply before Evelyn could reach for it. 

“Yeah,” Hawke said slowly, “that, I would be careful with.”

Evelyn turned back to the mirror, which didn’t reflect anything at all, but kept her hands at her sides. 

“What is it?” Bull growled.

“A- mirror,” Dorian said.

“What _else_ is it?”

“Well, that’s just it,” Dorian said testily, “we’ve no way to know, have we?”

He caught Hawke watching him but refused to acknowledge it. Giving up his own knowledge of what the eluvian _might be_ would only complicate things, later. If Hawke was experienced with the damn things, that was hardly Dorian’s concern. It wasn’t as though the Champion would be a source for them much longer.

Dorian hated himself for thinking it.

After a few moments’ consideration, Evelyn reached out the mark to the derelict mirror, and it made a noise quite like the disappearing page had, and the candle light had, and nothing much happened except Dorian thought the mark rippled, a little, and Evelyn seemed to be quietly weighed down with _something._

None of them were at ease by the time they reached the spectre of the Divine. She wasn’t particularly impressive, Dorian didn’t think, not compared to the Divine back home. He just couldn’t get over the silly Southern Chantry _hats_. Surely the Divine should have been able to opt out? He’d have to ask Vivienne later. 

The spirit had brought Evelyn’s memories with it, and that was a spectacularly odd thing to watch. The tension radiating off of Bull as they forged ahead was nearly palpable. Given where they were, Dorian suspected he could, in actual fact, feel the space around Bull pulsing with energy. Sera drew her bow on flickers of light, and Evelyn moved with a sort of driven single mindedness that had the party hastening to keep up. The Divine spirit had gone ahead to clear them a path, though of what it hadn’t said, and Hawke and Stroud bickered quietly about things as useless as _culpability_ until the jagged canyon opened up before them and Dorian came to a dead stop, only fractions of a moment before Evelyn did.

The Divine had warned them, that the Nightmare would know they were there. Dorian could _feel_ the awareness slide over him like a shadow. It seeped into him and he felt vulnerable and ill, for all his training against such things. The power of the entity that watched them threatened to overwhelm, but Dorian knew something it couldn’t, which was that Evelyn was going to smite it into the ground.

It didn’t make it any easier to bear the low, silken voice that seemed to come from everywhere greeting them with, “Ah. It seems we have a visitor.”

Shades erupted from the water, and they all fell to battle which was at least _familiar_. Using magic in the raw Fade perhaps less so, but Hawke was every bit the talent the stories asserted, and Dorian and the Inquisitor were each singularly skilled. Dorian grit his teeth against the strange boundaries his spells kept butting up against and cast, pushing through, and was pleased to see Evelyn using her staff as much as a blunt weapon as a focus. When in doubt, stabbing something through the head wasn’t the worst option available.

“Shit,” Bull panted, not bothering to reshoulder his axe. “ _Shit._ Can it hear us?”

“Assume it can,” Hawke mumbled, glaring balefully upward.

“Shit,” Bull said again.

“How much?” Sera asked. Her voice shook even though her hands were perfectly steady as the checked over her quiver. “Everythin’?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dorian said firmly. “We’re going to kill it, remember?”

Sera nodded, just a few too many times.

“Right,” she said. “Yeah. Fwup, pow. Kill it dead.”

He’d never seen her bravado so shaken.

There were little horrors dotting their path- the burned out husks of human beings, the handwritten notes of the damned littered about the place, and those seemed to impact Evelyn more than any of the Nightmare’s taunts, which it had in seemingly endless supply. Stroud and Hawke managed to shrug them off (though Dorian found himself curious as to who _Fenris_ might be), and Sera tried her hardest, but when that grasping, purring voice referenced Bull as though he were some _thing_ , a beast of burden that might be made a suitable vessel, Dorian could see the fear knotting up Bull’s muscles, the discomfort tightening his jaw.

It sparked a similar response from Dorian. Without any real awareness on his part, lightning rippled along the backs of Dorian’s hands and up his staff.

Fire had been his first element, which was not at all unusual for children of especially refined blood. It was a powerful element and a volatile one. He had swiftly evolved his affinity for fire, however, into an understanding of _light_ and _heat,_ and far earlier than his parents had expected lightning had become second nature to him. It had pleased them, until he’d gone away to school. Then it had rather exacerbated things.

Necromancy had come much later, and required a good deal more study, but not entirely as much discipline as mastering his ability to reach through the veil and summon something that burned.

When the Nightmare chuckled, low and at its leisure, Dorian felt another brief surge of anger, until some instinct told him the subject of the laughter was not, in fact, the Iron Bull.

“Dorian,” the Nightmare drawled. “Oh, Dorian. What have you done? I nearly mistook you for your father, but even he would never have dared.”

The party had not given the demon the acknowledgement that would have come from slowing their pace, and Dorian did not falter, now, but it was a wonder given that it felt as though his blood had turned to ice in his veins.

_It knows_ , he thought, and another rumble of the Nightmare’s dry amusement shook the air.

“Rather uncalled for,” Dorian huffed.

“None of you will leave this place,” the Nightmare said. “You are a petty thief, _Inquisitor_ , no greater detritus than your companions will make. But Dorian,” the Nightmare purred, drawing out the resonance behind the _n_ in Dorian’s name until he was certain he could feel the reverberation in his teeth.

“Your secrets I will devour.” 

There was a yawning blankness where the next quip or reversal should have been ready in Dorian’s mind. The Nightmare’s threat seemed immediate, real, and was so arresting that Dorian stumbled, once.

A broad hand caught him by the inside of his upper arm. Bull held him, prevented him from falling, and they regarded each other with, Dorian imagined, similar degrees of turmoil. Bull’s face was far from emotionless, but it was unreadable all the same. Sera screeched and Dorian _reacted_ , throwing a crackling blue barrier over them even as Bull brought his axe to bear, hunched with his back to Dorian in an obviously defensive stance. 

_I’ll protect you, too._

“Spiders,” Evelyn hissed in unison with the Champion as they shredded the raw Fade around them into vollies to send at-

Not spiders, to Dorian’s eyes.

“Spiders?!” Sera demanded. “I don’t see no spiders!”

Bull was already away and swinging with a roar, and the marshy clearing became a froth of magic and ichor. 

“They’re aspects of the Nightmare,” Dorian shouted, “they take whatever shape you give them! They’re nothing, Sera!”

“ _I know_ ,” she yelled back. Dorian thought her intonation sounded a bit off.

As far as fears went, Dorian supposed spiders were only a little embarrassing. He was relieved to see the fearlings hadn’t scraped anything particularly egregious from his own mind. Sure, the spindly, white limbed corpses scrabbling toward him were _off putting_ , but it was hardly anything worse than what they’d encountered in the Exalted Plains, or at any given Rift. It wasn’t until the second fell and slid, landing in a limp tangle near his feet, that he could make out the dramatically tapered ears and the latticework of dark red lines marking the wretched creature’s arms and back. As though they had been scoured with a ceremonial dagger.

Bled.

Dorian kept casting, ignoring the sudden churning in his stomach. A barrier on Bull and Stroud, a glyph at Evelyn’s back. Another form shambled out of the dark toward him, gaunt and purpled. Blight-ridden. Dorian nearly dropped his staff.

_Not them_ , he told himself, calmly drawing an inferno out of the air to turn the spectre of his dearest friend to ash.

_Not real_ , he added, as one of Sera’s arrows buried deeply into the skull of another bloodless elf that had walked the halls of his childhood home.

_Your fault, though_ , his mind supplied, traitorously serene. Distantly he heard shouting, and turned with lightning at the ready to address whichever morbid puppet was next- but it was Bull at his back, and Dorian stopped himself short of releasing the spell. 

Then it warped and died in his hand. Bull wasn’t charging toward him, exactly, but he was staggering unevenly forward with strides as long as he could manage, horns cracked, red crystalline spikes jutting from his skin. Dorian threw up a barrier to deflect the first ragged axe swing, and fell back.

The nightmare of Bull, shot through with red lyrium and half mangled, lurched over the corpse of one of Dorian’s father’s slaves, and the acid taste of bile hit the back of Dorian’s palat.

“ _Dorian!_ ”

The shout was Evelyn’s but the axe that cleaved through Bull’s lyrium-wrecked frame was- Bull’s, as it happened. Dorian wondered what Bull saw that he could cut down so easily. The Qunari was breathing heavily, the strange sub-magical pull of whatever technique Bull used tugging at Dorian’s own ambient magic, and Dorian tried to shake his head and nod at the same time.

“Fine! I’m fine! Is that all of them?”

“For now,” Stroud said. It was ominous but, Dorian knew, accurate assessment.

Time crawled, and they finally caught their breath on a marshy plain that opened up to a truly disconcerting sea. Sera shadowed the Inquisitor, not straying far, and Bull moved away to stare out at the water. Dorian wanted to go to him, but knew it would have been a useless gesture. It wasn’t the moment, if there would ever be one, to reveal what they had just seen to each other. It was even less the moment to attempt a comforting touch. In another year, with a group so small, Dorian might have gone to Bull; reached up to gently bow the qunari’s head with a tug on his horns; touched their foreheads or their noses together. In the present, he dared not, and suspected Bull wouldn’t appreciate any attempt at a bolstering pep talk, least of all from the resident Necromancer.

Dorian wandered, never allowing the porous boulders which dotted the landscape to obscure his view of his friends, but it was the Fade, after all. There might be something lying in wait to materialize that could even be helpful. 

Alternately, there could be a graveyard with stone markers for all of his friends. Whether it was a manifestation of his own thoughts or something that would be apparent to all of them was beside the point. He could see it, and so it was his to deal with. The most expedient and, probably, wisest course would be to turn away and forget the decrepit burial ground, but the Nightmare’s promise lingered in Dorian’s mind and he stepped forward. He couldn’t know what came next, now. Why, then, deny himself the chance to sate a curiosity when presented?

Other than distant views of family necropoli and gated plots scattered across Nevarra, Dorian had grown unaccustomed to seeing cemeteries. So much of Thedas feared the Blight, the South especially, that there wasn’t much call for them given the popular inclination toward cremation. This one was practically quaint: Neat, cramped rows of unimpressive headstones, boxed in with iron fencing. It wasn’t the names that gave him a sense of queasiness, but what was written beneath each: Irrelevance, helplessness, despair. The strongest people he knew, and these were, what, their most deep seated fears? Or only the ones that would bother them most, were they known? His gaze naturally sought for his own name even as he primed himself to dismiss whatever failing was carved into the rock, but when he found it, and the word registered, Dorian’s defenses collapsed.

_Temptation_ , what lied at the heart of each of his worst missteps. The demon he had been so arrogant to think he had conquered at his Harrowing. He hadn’t understood, at the time, that the type of demon one faced was indicative of the greater fault within oneself, that a desire demon had come to him because his essence had called out _to_ the desire demon. Which temptations had he ever successfully denied? He couldn’t think of one offhand. _The Fade_ , he reminded himself, _the influence goes both ways._

Dorian shook his head in an attempt to clear it, closing his eyes briefly against the sallow glow of the dreaming realm, and when he opened them again he kept his gaze off his own tombstone. Regrettably, it landed directly onto the Iron Bull’s.

There was a deep ragged chunk of rock missing from the memorial. Bull’s name was chiseled clearly in strong letters; then there was the crack, the space where it seemed something should have been carved in the same manner as the writing above it; and below where the rock was shattered, in jagged, uneven lettering that looked somehow newer than the rest, was written _Dorian Pavus_. 

Dorian jerked awkwardly, one foot shuffling back as though to retreat, unconsciously moved, while his arm lifted as though he might scrape the words away, claw them from the surface of the stone. 

_No_ , he thought, _no, no, no._

His back his a solid wall of warmth and he spun to face a grim but concerned looking Bull.

“Easy,” Bull said, covering Dorian’s shoulder with one hand, “what’s got you spooked?”

“Nothing,” Dorian said, too vehemently, too fast. “Nothing. Don’t-” 

The Iron Bull was a spy, a better one than anyone in the Inquisition probably realized, and so of course he was already taking stock of what it was that had Dorian floundering around like some panicked green scout. Dorian could see the way the tension shifted across Bull’s face, the briefest flicker of confusion giving way to comprehension. Dorian gripped the strap of Bull’s pauldron and tugged it with all of his strength, which was just enough to jostle Bull into looking back down at him.

“Please don’t,” Dorian begged. _Lie_ , he thought, _you’re the authority on magic, convince him. Stop him. Don’t just plead._

“...what are you afraid I’ll see?” Bull asked, slowly drawing a hand up between them to cover Dorian’s own where it still gripped Bull’s harness like a vice. “My name on one of those?”

“Yes,” Dorian whispered.

“Then I think I’ve got a right to look,” Bull reasoned.

“Of course you have,” Dorian snapped. Bull’s thumb was moving in a slow circle over the tendons of Dorian’s hand. It was distracting.

“Your name on one of those?” Bull asked. 

_Two, actually,_ Dorian didn’t say. Bull rumbled an understanding noise regardless, hardly needing verbal confirmation.

“Not a ‘you show me yours, I’ll show you mine’ moment?”

“Fasta- _vass_ , Bull! You’re-” Dorian struggled between pulling his hand back and trying to hit Bull’s chest with it. It was so infuriatingly inappropriate, and the dread and panic were too immediate within him to be diffused.

“None of this shit’s supposed to be real, right?” Bull prompted, a growl dragging at the edge of his voice. Dorian could feel the place where his pulse moved against Bull’s rough fingertips, as tangibly as he could feel the weight of stones erected in their memory, mere yards over his shoulder.

“...we’re real,” Dorian said, and it was a weak, uneven platitude to his own ears, if sincere enough. Bull’s mouth twitched into a neutral line, and he was suddenly unreadable.

“Did you find something?” Hawke called, voice cutting through the distance. They weren’t so far away, but everything seemed stretched.

“No!” Dorian shouted immediately back, stepping out of Bull’s shadow to make himself seen by the rest of the party. They seemed especially rag tag and small, clustered between the shallow, placid tide pools that dotted the end of the world. 

“Then let’s get a friggin move on!” Sera hollered back. Dorian turned back to Bull.

Who hadn’t moved. Dorian’s insides churned as badly as when the Nightmare’s voice had been humming in his bones.

“...Bull, we’ve got to press on. _Iron Bull_ ,” he tried again, when Bull remained a statue, unhearing. He turned away from the dilapidated cemetery, eye still stony, and started at a stalk for the group without looking at Dorian.

“Guess we do.”

It was like that until the Nightmare faced them directly. Even with pride demons shaking the ground and despair demons fracturing the air with cold, even as they moved like the well trained fighting organism they were, Bull was _removed_. He was keeping himself more rigorously in check than any of them were used to on the battlefield, he said nothing, and while he didn’t hesitate to show Dorian his back, it felt as though there were a barrier between them, and not one of Dorian’s making. By the time they spectre of Divine Justinia was blazing them a trail, Dorian had managed to shove the concern down where it could fester until they’d breathing room enough for him to address it. The Nightmare couldn’t reach them, it seemed, but its Aspect, a fear demon that warped the ground around it with its ambient power, was nothing to scoff at. That it began summoning waves of fearlings to aid it meant they had an actual problem on their hands.

Evelyn moved desperately, blurring through the Fade to get distance between herself and the creature each time it winked out of and back into existence, nearly upon her. Stroud endeavored to be her shield, plowing into the lesser fears as they manifested. Hawke seemed hellbent on keeping the demon’s attention split, alternating between sweeping arcs of fire to clear the fearlings away and powerful bursts of force magic to knock the demon off course. Dorian idly wished he’d studied the principal with any real focus. There was something about using magic to deliver devastating brute force that appealed to his present self in a way it hadn’t to his younger. 

_If we survive this, perhaps I’ll learn_ , he thought, and slammed his staff into the earth of the Fade to bring as much lightning down through the fear demon’s body as possible. It set the demon’s jagged, spindly legs seizing, and it made a sound that was admittedly unpleasant, but not so bad when compared to the experience of the Nightmare’s voices in their heads. Hawke whooped, rather inappropriately, and followed up with a volley of concussive blasts. The fear demon staggered and disappeared and Dorian’s heart jumped into his throat- maybe it was done, if they could get to the rift- when a fresh wave of fearlings, thick as locusts, emerged from the crags of rocks and the shadows around the clearing. Sera let out a wail, rage and exhaustion making her voice raw, as she tumbled frantically away from a surge of them to come up standing behind Evelyn, firing off two arrows at a time, arm moving furiously between her quill and bowstring.

It was nothing compared to the bellow the Iron Bull loosed. 

He swung his axe raggedly, fearlings sloughing off like loose rocks from a cliffside where they swarmed around him. Dorian had never seen him so agitated in a fight, a realization that brought with it a sense of disquiet. An invisible weight slammed down onto a few of the fearlings- Hawke’s doing, no doubt- which gave Bull a moment to heft his axe and set his footing, and begin to pull the massive weapon in vicious, whirling arc. It was an impressive and devastating maneuver, one Dorian knew Bull to use sparingly given the particular stress it put on the ankle and knee of his damaged leg. Damned effective, though: the fearlings scattered (in a shower of limbs Skinner would have appreciated), giving the Iron Bull room to breathe and recover.

Except there was a glimmer not four feet behind him, a sallow greenish thread of energy fissuring the air, which would, Dorian knew, erupt when the Aspect of the Nightmare reappeared there. On Bull’s blind side.

There was the clinking of bottles exchanging hands as the others did what they could to prepare themselves for the next bout even as they finished the current one, but it was muted by the blanket of golden glyphs Dorian drew up around himself. Normally it was a trifling effort to extend the magic to his companions like any barrier, but he pushed outward and felt the spell threaten to unravel. It required an immense amount of focus and Dorian had been hesitant to use it since coming back so far through time itself, and now he was rusty, unprepared. _Unacceptable._

The world turned burnished and bright around him, and it _slowed_. He ran at speed, nearly stumbling down the dais, to put himself at Bull’s back. Dorian could see the image of the fear demon fading into being, green smoke that would coalesce into an all too tangible creature in moments. He planted himself, staff raised, Everite blades poised to block the barbed claw that was only just solidifying. It struck as the demon appeared in full, as the speed at which time moved resolved itself around Dorian, and he reached for the last raw, clumsy piece of magic at his disposal. An inelegant barrier spread from the point of contact outward, like a shield of crackling glass. It held, which was all Dorian required of it, while the Inquisitor reached out her hand and brought a maelstrom of electricity to bear from nothing, rendering the Fear demon to ashes.

The quality of silence that followed was brittle. They were all panting raggedly, Bull’s breath in particular loud in Dorian’s ears. He leaned on his staff, the only concession to the painful, aching exhaustion he dared make, as Evelyn half staggered over to them. She reached out and gripped Dorian’s collar.

“You’re teaching me that one, too.”

“As my lady wishes,” he rasped.

“ _There_!” Sera shouted, springing forward and sprinting up the uneven slope toward a compact rift. The place it tore the air acted as a window, and through it could be seen the distinctive courtyard of Adamant’s keep.

“Thank the Maker,” Evelyn muttered. Dorian huffed in agreement, forcing his legs to move, to turn and follow Sera’s lead, but after only a few steps he halted and turned back.

Bull hadn’t moved. Both hands gripped his axe, still, ready for the next swing. His chest heaved but the rest of him was held taut, motionless, as though he were rooted to the ground. He was looking someplace past- or through- Dorian. 

“Bull,” Dorian said. They were so close, so very nearly _out_. “Bull, we cannot linger.”

Wherever Bull’s mind was, it was miles from their current situation. _Qunari don’t dream_ , he’d heard Bull say to Evelyn, and while Dorian had doubts about that, he knew experiencing the Fade had to be brutally jarring for him. Whatever it was the place had jostled loose within the Bull, they would have to confront it later. Even as Dorian recognized the way Bull breathed deeply, steadily, gaze fixed ( _Bringing himself down from something, maintaining control_ , he thought), he knew they hadn’t the luxury.

“Bull,” Dorian repeated, closing the distance between them and reaching out a hand to rest on the belly of the axe handle, equidistant between Bull’s. “Please, come with me.”

The axe handle nearly creaked from the brief tightening of Bull’s grip, but then it softened, and his focus pulled back from whatever distant place it had been held to and shifted instead to Dorian.

It flitted so barely across Bull’s face that Dorian didn’t fully catch it, didn’t fully recognize it until it had passed, and Bull had nodded and dropped his axe, and begun to walk toward the rift. Dorian himself had pivoted back and was falling into the rhythm of Bull’s walk, two steps behind, before he consciously realized what he had seen was a glimpse of _shame_.

_For what, though?_ Dorian mused, and further at the back of his mind, _How do I fix it?_

The Fade rumbled. Bull staggered and Dorian nearly fell. Sera was shouting from the base of the rift, and behind them-

Evelyn was behind them. With Hawke and Stroud. All three scrambling back from the form of the Nightmare as it descended from the thick green fog hanging above them. This was how it happened then, Dorian realized, as he lost sight of his friends. _Of course,_ he thought. _Of course she had to choose._

In other circumstances, attempting to cast a spell one knew to be volatile given the environment and dangerous given the sheer volume of mana only just expended might have been characterized as arrogant. Under the present circumstances, Dorian supposed it was probably just stupid. Still, he reached out; drew his staff up and swung it intricately, gritting his teeth against the thundering pain in his skull. He thought he could hear the Iron Bull’s voice, but from a great distance. Possibly through many miles of water.

Dorian _hated_ the sea.

From the other side of the Nightmare’s bulk rose a golden glow, and that was all Dorian allowed himself to see. He focused on the light, held it in his mind, until it was close enough to fill his vision.

A hand at his elbow spurred him into motion, and then they were running. It was difficult to see where. Everything seemed darker, somehow, after all that light. A laugh cut through the haze and he looked to his left to find Hawke running alongside him, grinning.

“You know,” the Champion said, “that _is_ a good trick.” Sera’s rough, slender fingers wrapped around Dorian’s wrist, and then everything was an indecipherable rush as she yanked him unceremoniously through the tear in the Fade.

The din of battle melded horribly with the screams of the Nightmare behind them. Then came the shouts, of soldiers crying out the Inquisitor’s return, of Evelyn, still standing at the rift, hand raised, mark piercingly bright. She straddled the world and the Fade and Dorian knew that image would be indelible, for every person there to bear witness to it. With a poise she had no right to after the arduousness of their journey, the Inquisitor stepped from the Fade and clutched her hand into a fist, at once sealing the rift and dispelling the remaining host of demons from the field.

_Divine or not_ , Dorian thought, _spirit or not, she truly is the Herald of Andraste._ His awe was tempered with sympathy.

“Holy shit,” Sera quavered. “Holy demon ass bugfuckering shit.”

“Yes,” Dorian agreed. After a moment he tilted his face toward her and asked, “How’s my hair?”

“Ugh!” Her mouth twisted with incredulity, and her nose crinkled upward in disgust. “Perfect!”

He chuckled and let her stalk off. Evelyn was recruiting the Grey Wardens, the fight was over. Heavy boots scraped on stone and Dorian lifted his head in hopes of greeting Bull, but found instead the Champion of Kirkwall before him.

“One of us would have stayed behind, you know,” Hawke said. “Were arguing for the privilege of it even, when you- Dorian, you’re bleeding.”

“Oh?” Dorian looked down at himself, absently patting over his torso. He hadn’t felt more than a scrape or two from various pincers or impacts. There was, however, dark red blossoming in artful droplets across the white of his collar ( _Lovely_ , he thought, _that will never come out)_ , and he lifted his fingertips to wipe gently across his mustache above the bow of his lip. They came away red.

“Strange,” he murmured, and the world went dark around him before the rough hewn stone of Adamant’s courtyard could rush up to meet him all the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry. SOrry SorRY SOrRY. SORRY. No excuses. Just sorry. SORRY.
> 
> And thank you thank you thank you thank you if you're still reading. This was supposed to be a lot longer but like oh god I'm just gonna POST. THIS. It was the most difficult stupid thing SORRY. But the next part is more kissing. You guys, I swear.


	8. Come Back and Haunt Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-Adamant. A lot of conversations. Some travel. And kissing.

The first awareness Dorian had was of being in a warm cocoon of perfect stillness, which was so far removed from any waking experience in his recent memory that he thought  _ I’m dead _ , and the panic from that realization abruptly woke him up.

Not dead, then: Dorian was in a tent. It seemed a very nice one; ivory canvas weighed down by, he could tell from the shadows, Inquisition banners draped over its frame. The center tentpole was tall, so the space sloped elegantly downward to its corners. Rugs scattered across flagstone dulled the sound of camp beyond the tent walls, but he could still make out the telltale scrapes of metals and leathers and the distant whinnying of horses. Wherever they were, they were well garrisoned. Dorian propped himself up on his elbows, wincing, and only then realized he wasn’t alone.

Madame de Fer regarded him coolly from a low settee to the left of Dorian’s cot. She looked unperturbed as was her fashion, and unbothered by the heat in silvery robes that seemed most apt for travel, as opposed to combat. Dorian had no doubts that he himself looked an absolute wreck, but at least she wasn’t gloating. Perceptibly.

“You’ve deigned to rejoin us, I see.”

“It would seem so,” Dorian agreed, sinking back down. “Dare I inquire as to the length of my absence?”

The impression of a smile flitted subtly across Vivienne’s features.

“Three days. Just long enough to be carted out of Adamant and given comparatively luxurious private appointments here. One might almost suspect you’d planned it.”

The shock of three days gone from his life didn’t stop a half-startled, genuine laugh from bubbling up in Dorian’s chest. 

“And miss three glorious days of unabating sun and dry heat? Never. Though now that you suggest it, not a bad plan the next time our dear Inquisitor fancies visiting another demon infested bog.”

Vivienne watched him narrowly for a moment before saying, “If I may be so bold as to offer Lord Pavus advice, it would be to refrain from ever again attempting what you managed in the Fade.”

_ Ah, yes, _ Dorian thought with a grimace,  _ ‘managed’ is about the right word. _ He could remember it, though truthfully only in flashes of gold and green and ichor black. It was… fuzzy. Nothing had especially made sense there to begin with. Trying to recall the events of the battle with the Nightmare as experienced through a haze of desperate strain didn’t add much clarity, save one sharp spike of it that sent Dorian upright, woven blankets pooling across his lap. 

“Where-” he began, noting he was dressed in a clean red tunic and, it felt like, the soft, loose-swinging trousers so favored by the Rivaini, and nothing else.

“Did everyone-” he tried again, beginning to extricate himself from the bedding.

“Everyone who went into the Fade came out of it,” Vivienne said, and Dorian forced himself to still, keeping his hands braced on the thin mattress’ edge. “And though there were terrible losses for both the Grey Wardens and the Inquisition, all of the Inquisitor’s advisors and confidants made it through the frey quite in one piece.”

“And Bull?” Dorian blurted. He had seen Vivienne destroy people’s evenings, if not their lives, with a well considered, purposeful look. He felt distantly he might be on the receiving end of one, now. Vivienne went so far as to tilt her head faintly to one side.

“I told you, my dear, all of our number returned from-”

“The Fade, yes,” Dorian interrupted, “but he- is he  _ all right _ ?” 

Vivienne’s posture did not shift, maintaining an upright curve not unlike a serpent, risen up and as of yet undecided on whether or not to strike, but again there was an infinitesimal softening and she nodded regally toward the tent’s central opening.

“Iron Bull is hale, as are his Chargers. You might satisfy your curiosity yourself.”

“Yes,” Dorian agreed, and stood too swiftly and nearly keeled over. He steadied himself against one of the tent’s blessedly sturdy posts and waited for the vertigo subside as Vivienne tutted, “Oh, honestly,”.

“I’ll have my footing in a moment,” Dorian muttered, sounding petulant to his own ears.

“Take more than one,” Vivienne suggested, rising gracefully and walking past him. “There is a glass and some water. The world has awaited you at your leisure for three days, Dorian. What are a few minutes more?”

Her footsteps were soft on the rugs, and when she lifted a hand to brush the tent flap aside Dorian raised his head to squint slightly at the bright light beyond her that threw her into silhouette.

“Vivienne,” he said, and she did him the courtesy of stopping. “...why were you at my bedside?”

“It was my turn, my dear,” she replied, and was gone.

Dorian found his footing, and the glass which was, in fact, an impeccably polished silverite disc, and the carafe of water with muddled sweet mint and Elfroot set amongst a pile of assorted linens. He swished it around his mouth until his throat felt normal and his teeth felt less  _ grimey _ . There was a small pallet of what turned out to be wax, which he rubbed between his fingers for a bemused moment before accepting the gift for what it was, whomever it was from, and using it to right his moustache.

He still looked a bit… rough, but there was nothing available to scrape the shadow of growth from his jaw, and anyway his patience was running thin.

Barefoot, unkempt, and scarcely dressed was not how Dorian would have wished to greet Evelyn or her troops or  _ anyone _ , come to that, and in a previous life he might have waited for those necessary things to be brought to him once Vivienne had informed the others of his waking. Now, he could not banish the memory- painfully clear- of Bull’s shoulders slumped, his eyes clearing as he returned from whatever distant, awful place the encounter with the Nightmare had sent his mind; and the expression that had settled with such terrible finality over his handsome features, in the moment before the Iron Bull’s walls had gone back up.

Dorian needed to see him with his own eyes, alive in the daylight, whatever that meeting might bring.

Shrugging out of the tent and into the open air of what he took, from the motif, to be Griffon Wing Keep was jarring. The heat of the day was at its most oppressive, the sun huge and unobstructed by so much as a wisp of cloud cover. The noises of camp resounded off the fortress’ myriad stone surfaces and were, for a moment, nearly unbearable. Dorian scanned the Keep’s uppermost level for a recognizable face as he walked, but saw none until he rounded a pillar and found himself at the head of a wide stairway.  At the bottom of the stairs was another open air level with some tents and wooden caches set out, and Grim was rifling through one. He lifted a cask from it and held it aloft, turning his back to Dorian, and Dorian followed Grim’s line of sight to find several of Bull’s Chargers clapping and flashing Grim a thumb’s up. Skinner was the first to stop, having spied Dorian, and she dropped her heels from where they had been balanced on Dalish’s lap, and pulled what looked like a very tiny knife from the corner of her mouth, which Dorian hoped was a trick of the light and not in fact her choice of toothpick. Dalish’s attention immediately followed and then Stitches was up from his seat and ducking away, disappearing into the large tent behind them. 

_ They seem as thrown as you are _ , Dorian thought, and started to descend the first stair when Evelyn’s voice came bright and clear from behind him.

“Dorian!”

He turned, hoping Bull might be at their leader’s heels, unable to feel too disappointed to see Cassandra and Solas, instead. Everyone looked to be in one piece. Evelyn was in blue and white travel leathers, the Inquisition symbol cast in silver and sewn into the chest piece, but Dorian wondered if the colors weren’t a nod to their new Grey Warden allies.

Cassandra’s strides overtook the Inquisitor and she reached Dorian first, taking him strongly by one shoulder and peering into his eyes. He managed a weary smile, canting an eyebrow.

“Not dead, dear Seeker.”

“There are worse things, Dorian,” she replied gravely, but seemed satisfied by what she saw, and smiled at him before stepping aside, allowing Evelyn the room to step up and pull him into a fierce embrace. He lifted his hands to rest on her shoulders.

“Still not a demon,” Dorian murmured reassuringly.

“You bastard,” Evelyn gasped, squeezing him tightly for a moment before pulling back, grinning at him hard though it wobbled around the edges. “Three days, Dorian. You’ve been out for  _ three days _ .”

“It certainly feels that way,” he replied, making a show of rotating his shoulder and wincing a bit as he reached up to scrub a hand over his stubbled jaw. “I hope I didn’t miss anything.”

Evelyn’s jaw worked slightly before she gave a terse shake of her head.

“Nothing world shattering.”

“Nothing _ else  _ world shattering, you mean,” Dorian said, trying to glean from her posture and the dart of her gaze some clue as to what was coming, what she wouldn’t yet say.

“Yes,” she agreed with a quiet laugh, “that. I’ll have Commander Rylen send some clean water up, it’s a bit of a process at the moment, and you’ll have to eat something, and-” She stopped herself, consciously withdrawing her hand from where she’d begun fidgeting at Dorian’s sleeve. “Then we’ll sit, and talk.”

“I’ll endeavor to be quick about it,” Dorian said, offering her a smile he hoped was reassuring. “I’ve already deprived you of my conversation far too long.”

Cassandra followed the Inquisitor away but Solas lingered, and at Dorian’s raised eyebrow stepped forward to walk apace with him as he headed back toward the tent he’d awoken in.

“She was concerned,” Solas said, “even frightened, though she hid it well.”

“The Inquisitor is excessively compassionate,” Dorian answered, fighting down his growing agitation. There was someone else he needed to see. “May it remain the case through the trials to come.”

“I quite agree,” Solas remarked, sounding faintly surprised, though his tone was even again when he went on. “She was not the only one, however.”

“Solas,” Dorian said brightly, stopping at the lip of his tent’s shadow and fixing his fellow mage with a blinding smile, “did you stand vigil at my bedside?”

He was rewarded with the scowl he’d expected, if not the reply.

“I did, the second night.”

The admission startled the smile from Dorian’s face. Not dramatically- he merely blinked, and it slipped away- though if the slip in poise pleased Solas, he was uncharacteristically gracious enough to keep it to himself.

“...and the first?” Dorian asked. Solas looked away, peering across the ramparts.

“A number of us, for a time, though exhaustion from battle and travel proved impossible to overcome. Ultimately it was our Lady Seeker who kept watch.”

“And the third was Vivienne,” Dorian said, to which Solas merely nodded confirmation. “Well… thank you, Solas. I am in your debt."

That caught Solas’ attention back again, and he peered at Dorian with a sharp curiosity that, under normal circumstances, would have quite pissed him off.

“...If you insist, though I would not have. Did you dream, do you recall?”

Dorian didn’t. He tried to reach back in his memory but found only darkness, and shook his head. Solas spent another moment in contemplative silence, then nodded and started away.

“The others will be cheered by your return. Take your last moments of solitude while you may.”

Dorian watched the elf pass quietly into the shadows of the Keep, heading for, probably, the remotest corner of it he could find. He had a point. When Sera heard he was awake, she’d be compelled to come do her own demon sniff-test, which meant Dorian had a limited window in which to bathe and gather his thoughts. Not that either seemed a tremendous priority.  _ Where by Dumat’s bones was the Iron Bull? _

With one last cursory frown toward the stairs, Dorian gave up on an immediate reunion and swept back into the tent. It felt good, a proper dramatic sweeping back of the canvas with one arm so he could stalk into it with appropriate force. Three days gone, Solas watching him sleep, Evelyn clearly- if subtly- shaken, and if Bull had been told by the Chargers that Dorian was awake, he was taking his  _ sweet damn time _ reacting to the news. Dorian was still brooding when two soldiers and Commander Rylen arrived with a large cask of water. The infantrymen were gone as quickly as they’d arrived, but the Commander introduced himself and instructed Dorian to the chamber set into the stone of the Keep itself which cleverly had a drain built in, so the runoff might pour from one of the spouts that emptied over the gaping sandy pit at the back of the fortress.

“How civilized,” Dorian remarked.

“Suppose civilization is what you make of it,” Rylen answered, with an off-handed gruffness that earned a huff of genuine laughter from Dorian. He thanked the commander and scarcely noticed if the man hesitated awkwardly before shuffling out. He’d probably exhausted himself being nice to the Tevinter Magister, Dorian thought.  _ Fair enough. _

It wasn’t luxurious: Dorian was grateful the water was cool, and didn’t expend mana futzing with the temperature. He drew it from the cask with a wide ladle and poured it over himself, clothing discarded beyond the water’s reach, and watched it sluice along grooves in the stonework and disappear down a small grate. After a cursory rinse, Dorian discarded the ladle and sank his arms to the elbows, splashing the water up and over his chest and shoulders, the back of his neck. He had only a scrap of soap, but he also hadn’t been wallowing in his own filth for three days. Hopefully Solas wasn’t also responsible for  _ that _ .

The sound of the water sloshing onto the stone nearly covered the scrape of armor and leather, which had Dorian turning, far too quickly to be nonchalant in the slightest, back toward the tent, but the cadence of the steps was wrong, too quick, and when Cullen appeared at the lip of the stone chamber Dorian had masked his impatience and disappointment.

“Dorian, you’re-” Cullen hesitated, freezing up for a moment, before looking at the ceiling and gamely attempting to go on, “-bathing.”

“I am! Well spotted,” Dorian replied, and didn’t bother turning away. The camaraderie he had developed- would still find- with Cullen had never prevented Dorian from appreciating the Commander aesthetically. This included his tendency toward awkward, breathless laughter and unbidden blushes that crept up the soldier’s neck and took over his ears like rashvine. Dorian’s infatuation with the former Templar had been short lived and toothless, but with the gift of perspective, Dorian found he could thoroughly enjoy the opportunity to give the man a truly difficult time of it.

“I- my apologies,” Cullen was stammering, “I only- had heard you were-”

“Naked and alone?”

“- _ awake _ , and in good health, Maker’s  _ Breath _ ,” Cullen huffed. Dorian laughed brightly and pushed his hands through his hair, flicking the excess water off his fingertips.

“Eager for a rematch, were you?” he said, extending one hand forward and relishing the look of slow dawning embarrassment, tinged with panic, on Cullen’s face.

“Ah- That’s not- n-not,” Cullen said and Dorian angled an eyebrow at him.

“Because I’m afraid I’m without a chess board. Do get a hold of yourself, Commander. The towel, please.”

Cullen gave a start and grabbed the bath sheet up from the low stone bench which also held Dorian’s clothing, and held it out to him.

“Certainly,” Cullen mumbled, as Dorian retrieved the sheet and set about drying himself off, scrubbing away the last of his exhaustion, then moved to dress himself while Cullen slouched away to take up a lean against the nearest solid wall.

“It’s good to see you… feeling like yourself,” Cullen said. Dorian let out a breath as he straightened from pulling the linen trousers back on.

“If not dressing like myself, but all good things in time, I’ve been told. At any rate, still not a demon. You’re looking less haggard than one might have expected given what I recall of the scene at Adamant,” Dorian added cheerfully, as Cullen rubbed a hand graceless across his forehead.

“Thank you. Sort of. I’m afraid I haven’t slept much.”

“Oh?” Dorian made a show of turning to raise an eyebrow. Cullen flushed a ruddier shade. Dorian turned fully, eyes widening at the unexpected show of embarrassment. “ _ Oh _ ?” 

“It isn’t- Maker’s Breath! I’ve been keeping vigil.”

The list of benevolent overseers of Dorian’s three day coma was, he’d thought, complete. Cullen wasn’t among their number.

“How pious,” Dorian said archly. “Was another of our number in a lyrium-deficiency-induced coma?”

“No,” Cullen said, shaking his head and avoiding Dorian’s gaze. Dorian pulled the tunic back on, maintaining his expectant glare throughout the process. Cullen still wouldn’t look at him.

“Were you keeping a candle lit in the hope of my speedy recovery?”

Guilt flashed over Cullen’s features, which was sweet, but hardly what Dorian was after.

“Ah. No.”

“Then who is it that’s been keeping you up nights?” Dorian drawled with pointed mercilessness, letting his gaze rest, heavy and exacting, on Cullen’s agitated posture.

“I’ve- Sera and the Bull were shaken by your experience in the Fade, but as mages, you and-”

“The Inquisitor,” Dorian supplied needlessly, all imperiousness gone with the sudden skipping of his heart, giving Cullen room to show his annoyance.

“-Yes, and given the account of your display and subsequent lack of consciousness, Cassandra was preoccupied, but she- Evelyn- she had... her own concerns.”

The implication didn’t sit well, that Evey had been unnerved enough by the prospect of demonic attention she would ask a former Templar, even one has ruggedly handsome and easily embarrassed as Cullen, to spend the night in her presence. Although to be fair, they had faced a literal Nightmare, so her  _ concerns _ , such as they were, may well have been warranted.

“...But nothing manifested.”

“No,” Cullen said firmly, some of the grim weight of what had been asked of him showing through in the tightness of his knuckles, as he tucked his hands into the crooks of his arms.

“Of course not,” Dorian agreed readily. “It’s good, then. That she had you to ask. She must trust you a great deal.”

“To perform my duties?” Cullen muttered darkly. Dorian had to wonder, given the admitted gaps in his knowledge of Southern Templar-rearing, what old pain it was that colored Cullen’s thoughts. Both he and Evelyn had been formed to a degree in the Circles; neither had escaped unscathed, although it had taken quite a long time for her to out any of that to Dorian, and even then, with her careful, thoughtful way of speaking, Dorian knew he’d been given merely an implication of the experience, never a full rendering.

His Northerness and her mageness had independently bred in them both a wariness of the Templar order, but Dorian knew his disdain was keener. He had in fact found Evelyn’s considerably  _ lacking _ at times _. _ Watching Cullen’s handsome features go taut and shadowed, Dorian wondered if she hadn’t at least part of the right of it. Perhaps there had been no jailers within the walls of the Southern Circles. Only prisoners.

It excused nothing and explained much.

“What greater boon could she beg of you?” Dorian prompted, mindful to keep his tone uncritical.

Cullen stayed rigid for long enough that Dorian had a moment of peevish wondering if he had even been heard, when the Commander gave a start and straightened, unfurling himself. It was, by Dorian’s standards, a  _ distasteful _ thought: Not merely the idea of Evelyn falling to a demon, but of the felling of an Abomination as a mercy. It  _ was _ a mercy, and Dorian knew as much, just as he knew distasteful thoughts and ill mercies were easy to judge in others, yet all but impossible to reconcile within oneself.

He still gave Helsima a wide berth, though when they did interact his unease was borne of his own memories, and hidden well enough from her. Not that she required it of him.

“...I wish I could think of one,” Cullen said, and Dorian sighed, closing the space between them to lift a hand and rest it in a brief measure of solidarity against Cullen’s armored shoulder.

“Perhaps you will.”

Cullen’s answering smile was slight, but warm.

“Perhaps. I ought to-” he began, when the tent’s flap pulled back at its tallest point, and the sun’s reflection on the sandstone struggled to brighten the interior around the considerable bulk of shadow that filled the entry.

“Not taking off on my account?” Bull asked, casual as anything while Dorian’s heart, throat, and stomach all abruptly ceased functioning the way they were supposed to and, it felt to him, tried to swap places.

“No, though frankly I don’t think I can handle you both at- no,” Cullen corrected himself quickly, the word practically jumping from his lips. “No, no. I’m not finishing that thought, so just- just don’t.”

He held both hands up defensively and moved away from Dorian for the exit Bull was still holding open. Cullen managed to get to the mouth of the tent without giving his back to either of them, as though barbed innuendo could do the same sort of damage an arrow might.

“Glad you’re- Right,” he said to Dorian, nodded to Bull, and ducked out. Bull watched him go with a bemused look and Dorian struggled to catalog both everything wrong with his own appearance and everything right with Bull’s while remaining casual.

“Did he break into a run?” he asked, consciously sauntering away from the alcove where the water from his bath was almost completely evaporated off the parched stone.

“No,” Bull answered, “but it was a close call. Hey, look at you. Up and about.”

“Ah, yes,” Dorian said, keeping his eyes on the makeshift vanity, the little jar of wax, “look at me. Or better don’t, I’m afraid. I’m scarcely presentable.”

“Thought I noticed some scruff there,” Bull drawled approvingly, slipping into the shadow of the tent. It must have required an exacting self awareness, to avoid knocking any support posts or tearing any canvas with his horns. Dorian wondered how long it had taken him to achieve it, if Bull had ever suffered a gawky teenaged phase, or if he had always born such innate grace. A curiosity that would beg satiating another time.

“Scruff perhaps, but no scales, claws, or ichor,” Dorian pointed out with brittle cheer. 

“No,” Bull agreed, and came to stop several feet behind Dorian, but far enough to his right that he remained more in plain sight than peripheral.

Now they were alone together, anything Dorian had wanted to ask, to say, was gone from his mind. Bull’s presence was reassuring, but stifling: Dorian could catch the particular scent of leather oil and horn balm, could hear the steady, near-silent in and out of Bull’s breath. He was loathe to disrupt the moment.

“Good thing, too,” Bull said, doing it for him.

“Oh? I would have thought scales and claws would suit your dragon fetish.” 

Bull snorted.

“It’s different. Trust me.”

“Far be it from one as studiously debaucherous as myself to cast aspersions upon another’s proclivities,” Dorian said.

“Yeah, right. You’re telling me kink shaming isn’t a national pastime at Altus shindigs?”

“At society functions, certainly,” Dorian sniffed, “but never with friends.”

There was a rumble in Bull’s considering hum that make the hairs raise at the nape of Dorian’s neck.  _ Friends, indeed _ . 

“You’re feeling well?” Dorian asked distractedly, though only because he was desperate for something to distract himself with, something that would let him maintain a barrier. On the floor by his foot was a largish leather pouch, which was his, and he reached down to rifle gratefully through it for a moment.

“Better now,” Bull said, and Dorian could have chucked his pot of khol at the great oaf. Insufferable. Impossible.

Instead he uncorked the lid and readied the tip of his small sable applique brush, and steadfastly did not look at Bull.

“Well, we’re out of Adamant,” Dorian said, “so I imagine you would be.”

“...yeah,” Bull rumbled and went to sit on the edge of a large, heavy trunk among several piled wooden crates, adjusting the angle of his knee before leaning his elbow on it. Dorian pushed his tongue against his hard palate to stop himself from asking  _ Did you overdo it _ . 

“For a minute there, I wasn’t sure we were going to. Get out of Adamant.”

“For a minute there,” Dorian countered dryly, “I wasn’t sure we were going to get out of the  _ Fade _ . Although I imagine that’s what you mean.”

He moved the brush in a deft, easy sweep, keeping the bristles tilted to avoid his lashes, drawing a steady, dark line. He was aware of Bull watching him fixedly, and belatedly realized they hadn’t shared this yet. Bull had never seen Dorian don his armor. They weren’t even close to that point.

“Still, Evelyn has a singular knack for defying the odds, so I suppose the worse things seemed, the better our chances actually were of making our escape. And making it rather pointedly, at that.”

Dorian did his second eye and put the little pot away, and then turned in his seat to take Bull in: the rigidity in his arms, the tension along his jaw and temples.

“...as much as I’m sure you’re loathe to give the Fade another thought, there’s…. I suppose there is a matter which… requires our attendance.”

None of the tension eased in Bull’s frame, and Dorian wished he’d sent him away, brushed the inevitable off until he was at least properly attired and armed with the trappings of his usual self. Bull wasn’t carrying an axe the size of Lace Harding, but he was otherwise ready for a skirmish, and, of course, he was Ben Hassrath. Bull was always armored.

“The graves,” Bull said. Dorian gave a nod.

“What… what they said,” he started. “Only we saw. And I… feel no need to inform anyone else of what was written there. At best, it’s upsetting. At worst...”  Bull’s expression was neutral, and might as well have been carved into rock.

“You disagree,” Dorian said, drawing himself up to drape one arm haughtily over the back of his chair. Panic fluttered in the pit of his stomach.

“Didn’t say that. Just curious.”

“About?”

“Temptation,” Bull said, and the word felt excruciatingly drawn out. There was not typically that much rumbling or humming when the word was spoken, Dorian was quite sure. “That’s not so bad. Guess you could take it to it’s farthest conclusion, maybe imagine there’ll be a point where the temptation for glory or recognition back home gets the better of you. Temptation for power puts you in a bad spot. But temptation, I don’t know. That doesn’t make me nervous.”

“How nice for you,” Dorian bit out, acid on the tip of his tongue. 

“But,” Bull went on, “that’s not the stone that would concern Evelyn the most, I would wager.”

Dorian swallowed. He could see it clearly in his mind. Bull’s name, the crack in the stone, and then--

His own name. His own name written in place of whatever Bull’s mortal fear should have been. Whatever spectre would loom at his death.

“No,” Dorian agreed, “no. No, I imagine not. Bull, I… What it… said, on your marker. I won’t pretend to know why-”

“No?” Bull prompted.

“Of course not!” Dorian snapped, with no vitriol and too much discernible upset for his taste. “It’s- It’s the Fade, isn’t it? Untrustworthy, certainly, but more than that, the place actively reaches into you and searches for-”

“You know why we follow the Qun.”

The statement caught Dorian entirely off guard and he fell silent.

“...is this a trap?” he murmured.

“Dorian,” Bull growled.

“I- I’ve heard you speak of the- stability the Qun’s rule brings.”

“That’s boiling it down, but… yeah,” Bull muttered, stifling a sigh, “the Qun isn’t just the light of true knowledge in the world, don’t make a face--” Dorian pressed his mouth into a line, but persevered, “--but my people, we need it. We need the order. We need the structure, and the laws. We need it or… or we’re nothing.”

“Bas,” Dorian said. Bull’s eye narrowed momentarily but he nodded.

“Except worse.”

“Tal-Vashoth,” Dorian said. Bull didn’t answer, which was confirmation. Dorian desperately tried to piece the conversation together, to try and get a glimpse of where it was heading.

“I… Bull, what are you-?”

“Madness,” Bull said. “That’s what comes from losing the Qun. From wandering too far from it, or rejecting it. I’ve seen it, in every Tal-Vashoth I ever went up against. Madness.”

Dorian rather felt as though the word was supposed to have some particular meaning or weight for him. He knew it would be a torment for Bull, when he left the Qun, an ever present fear of-

Madness. Of course. Of  _ course. _

In a different tent on a different windswept plain, Bull had, or would, but had tersely revealed that fear to Dorian in grunted stops and starts. Dorian had idled his hands along the curves of Bull’s horns and told him  _ Nonsense _ and the press of their mouths had become frantic before long. But before that part, somewhere in the mutterings, had been something about the demons being right, though at the time Dorian hadn’t thought Bull had meant it literally.

The crack in the stone. That’s what it had been, to Bull’s eyes.  _ Madness _ . Not  _ Dorian Pavus _ . The relief could have knocked Dorian over. He considered feeling guilty about that, but opted to abstain for the moment.

“....Have you a blade?” Dorian asked, and received a look that bordered on owlish. Bull nodded.

“I wouldn’t stoop to such barbarism were we not lodged in Thedas’ abandoned, sand-ridden asshole-” Bull gave a surprised snort, “-but I find myself in need of a decent shave. I’ll settle for a passable one, however.”

With a great economy of movement, Bull produced a flat sort of dagger from some compartment Dorian could not readily see. Bull turned it in his hand and offered Dorian the handle. Dorian accepted it with a careful hand and turned back to the improvised mirror. He’d made do with considerably worse before.

“I haven’t managed to get a full recounting from anyone,” Dorian said as he turned a pinch of spice-scented soap flakes into a lather in an insouciant display of magic, the kind he usually refrained from on the road. They were camped, and he’d barely grazed the wellspring of his magic since waking. The offhanded usage was almost as rewarding as the tiniest shift of Bull’s mouth toward a disapproving grimace.

“What happened after my, I assume, dramatic and spectacularly graceful loss of consciousness?”

“‘Spectacularly’ might be overdoing it,” Bull replied.

“I doubt that very much, what do I do that  _ isn’t _ ?” Dorian huffed, tilting his head to one side and beginning the slow, careful process of scraping a naked blade along his jaw.

“You’ve got a point,” Bull murmured, and Dorian very nearly shivered. Luckily for the quality of his shave, he managed not to.

“Well,” Bull continued, practically blithe but for the weight of his focus which Dorian felt, could almost see in his periphery, “you dropped like a sack of stones and Hawke was closest but tapped, not that I hear the Champion is any good with healing shit. Better at blowing it up.”

“We have that in common,” Dorian sniffed.

“Yeah. Solas was right there, pops up out of nowhere that guy, and then it was kind of a cluster fuck. Lotta talk about lyrium and mana exhaustion and a bunch of mage crap I couldn’t really follow.” From Bull’s tone, this inability hadn’t been much of a hardship. 

“It was… chaotic.”  _ Thoroughly disapproving _ , Dorian noted.

“All that fuss, on top of the aftermath of the battle itself,” he continued, “in addition to what must have been considerably heightened tensions over the Herald’s disappearance and subsequent return, and, of course, the Grey Warden-ness of it all. My, how-” He stopped himself, lips pressed briefly into a line. Bull inclined his head askance.

“...well, I was going to say ‘harrowing’,” Dorian explained, “but it seemed in poor taste.”

Bull pulled a face and muttered, “Ugh. Mage humor.”

“As though you’ve any room to judge!” Dorian shot back, indignant.

“Hmm,” Bull intoned, wholly noncommittal, and then the bulk of him filled Dorian’s vision as the warrior leaned over him. Had it been anyone else, they might merely have been leaning  _ closer _ , but the proximity, the close quarters, and Bull’s size created a somewhat more dramatic effect. Dorian didn’t startle but he set the knife down quickly and blinked rapidly up at the Bull.

The rough pad of a grey thumb brushed Dorian’s jaw before dragging, firmly, at the corner of his mouth, just beneath the curl of his moustache. The touch was unhurried and purposeful, and Dorian didn’t move. Bull pulled his hand away and dissipated the lathered soap between his thumb and forefinger.

“Missed a spot,” he offered in explanation, as if Dorian’s brain in that moment was capable of processing words. He reached a hand up to wrap around the crook of Bull’s horn, as much to pull the great brute down as to help Dorian leverage himself up. Either way the kiss was full and hard and not especially graceful, and Dorian recognized a barely restrained grunt of surprise from Bull. Whether it was because he’d lunged at Bull’s face with no warning or because he’d caught hold of Bull’s horn- new territory for one of them and incredibly forward of the other regardless of timeline, really- was difficult to say. 

The Bull didn’t stumble, though; caught Dorian by his sides, which encompassed hip and waist and lower back, all, given the breadth of Bull’s hands; held Dorian fast and in fact pulled him closer, fully out of the seated position he’d been in until he was in the much more compelling posture of half straddling Bull’s thigh. Balance righted, Dorian pressed forward, gripping the strap of Bull’s pauldron with one hand and digging his fingertips into the taut stretch of muscle that formed the slope of Bull’s shoulder with the other. Dorian tasted wine, faintly, and more importantly  _ Bull _ , so perfectly familiar. The texture of his lips, the ancient split, long healed, and the gentle burn of stubble all anchored Dorian, banished his lingering anxiety and unease, cementing the reality of the moment in his bones and body. 

When he stopped kissing Bull to pull in a ragged breath and take stock of the situation, Dorian was stretched across Bull’s lap, thighs burning gently from the strain, all but hanging off the Qunari’s frame. He would have been, in fact, had it not been for Bull’s grip across the expanse of Dorian’s lower back and fully half his ass.

“Fuck,” Bull rasped, and Dorian gusted a laugh.

“Now there’s a thought.”

The answering rumble that moved through Bull’s body until it was a hum in his lips as they pressed again, slow and inexorable and wonderfully insistent, to Dorian’s was almost loud enough to drown out the rest of the camp. 

Sera’s voice cut straight through all of it.

“Evil Lord Fancybritches is back from the- oh,” she said, stopping abruptly several steps in. 

“Oh. Oh. Too many britches.” Her expression shifted from distaste to a sort of wild glee as Dorian and Bull registered her presence. Dorian felt Bull tense, slightly, but whatever instincts Dorian had once possessed to put distance between himself and the Bull in, of all people,  _ Sera’s _ company were long dead and buried, and anyway if he scrambled to disengage he would just end up falling to ground and looking like a blighted idiot. Sera was cackling. Bull was remaining outwardly laconic and unbothered- because  _ of course _ \- but Dorian could tell he was being watchful. Attentive to something that Bull thought required cataloging for later inspection. Dorian just couldn’t tell what it was.

“The perfect number of britches, actually,” he said with a minimum of acid, “until mere moments ago.”

Sera blew him a raspberry and made an interesting hand gesture that Dorian didn’t think was traditional, as Evelyn appeared at the mouth of the tent, Dorian’s clean and folded robes in her arms.

“Are you-,” she began, then took two additional steps before stopping entirely. Dorian did, then, make an attempt to swiftly disembark Bull’s lap, as Bull surreptitiously tried to lend a hand while righting himself as he stood, coughing briefly. Evelyn’s face was almost completely neutral. She looked down at the garments in her arms for a moment before meeting Dorian’s eyes.

“...I thought you’d need these,” she said, and her gaze slid fractionally, but visibly, over to Bull.

“....but maybe not?”

“Yes,” Dorian started, rushing forward to take them and then stepping immediately back, an equal distance from the Inquisitor and the Bull. 

“Yes, thank you. That’s- splendidly thoughtful. A vast improvement all around. Without them I was feeling quite-” and his mind clamped down so hard on the word  _ naked _ before it could leave his mouth that all that was left was blank emptiness.

“-horny,” Sera contributed, vowel stuttering with her peculiar low giggle. Dorian’s teeth clicked shut as Bull groaned.

“All right, that was pretty good,” he said as Sera made a victory gesture that was  _ also _ vulgar, then darted out of the tent.

Evelyn was a study of blankness, herself. 

“Well,” she said evenly, “Dorian, when you’ve… dressed, I would very much like to speak with you.” She hesitated, nodded to Bull, seemed for a moment to forget which direction the exit was, then turned on her heel and strode out.

A quiet chuckle started shaking out of Bull and Dorian whipped around to glare at him. Bull cut it off with a mild cough. He stood, horns gracefully skirting the fabric of the tent, and moved to stop in front of Dorian, looming over him. Dorian maintained his glare, though possibly the warning was not as potent as it might have been had they not just been in such an enthusiastic clinch.

“See you out there,” Bull said, and Dorian resolutely did not look at the Qunari’s mouth- maybe once. Only briefly. Twice, very briefly- before waving him off.

“Undoubtedly. Get  _ out _ ,” he added, a smile slipping around the corner of his mouth when Bull made no move to do so on his own. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so easy, moving forward. There was more between them than Bull knew. Adamant would hang over them for months to come, Dorian was sure. Still, if there could be more moments like these...

Left alone, Dorian tried to catch up, to map his currently reality and overlay it onto the one he had already lived, the one he had… abandoned was the wrong word. Indeed, he had broken all the laws of nature and magic to salvage that reality, to right one moment of cosmic wrong that he frankly had had no right to change.

_ Though, _ Dorian mused as he dressed himself,  _ in all fairness, you haven’t changed it yet. You’ve merely displaced yourself. The fabric of time itself seems right as rain, you’re the only real anomaly. There, isn’t that comforting? _

It wasn’t. While technically his use of the amulet had been a success, while coming out of Adamant with everyone alive should have counted as a success, while Bull being… as he was, so early in their acquaintance, ought to have stood as a monumental success, Dorian was beginning to feel the itching unease that came with unmitigated failure.

He took himself in at the glass once more, fully garbed. Unless one knew he had just spent three days in a magical-trauma induced coma, one certainly would not have supposed it to look at him. He tugged his collar so it fell at a more dashing, artful angle, then walked out to find Evelyn.

Thankfully, she had meant  _ only _ him. He would be spared Solas’ prying and Vivienne’s sharper interrogation and dressing down until he’d regained more of his strength. He found Evelyn stepping as gingerly through their recounting of the Fade as he’d expected to tread, himself, though for markedly different reasons. They took supper after an hour or so and continued to parse their memories, the landmarks and artifacts and, of course, personal experience of the Nightmare for several more. 

“...It wasn’t just spiders,” she said softly, absently thumbing the rim of her drinking glass and staring at the middle distance. The fortress was as still as it could be with a full garrison, and their firepit was well banked. 

A lifetime ago, they hadn’t delved quite so deep, but then, Dorian had not  _ been there _ . 

“No,” he agreed, gently. She spent another moment not meeting his eyes.

“Do you know about the Right of Annulment?”

“I know  _ of _ the Right of Annulment,” Dorian replied, not bothering to hide his seething disapproval. To be sure, there had been a number of times during school he would have leapt at the chance to rid himself of the rest of his class, but that was different. That was, by Tevinter standards, healthy academic competition. The Southern Templars having the ability to wipe out the entire population of a compulsory institution was a good deal more sinister.

“When the Rebellion started and Ostwick fell… It’s… You know them all, is the thing,” Evelyn said quietly, gaze trained on the still lit embers buried between the coals. 

“Not just the apprentices and enchanters. You know  _ everyone _ . And suddenly people you thought of as friends, even family of a kind, are…” There was a distant noise out in the dunes, the cry of some implausibly ill tempered creature, Dorian was sure, and it filled the quiet for a moment.

“...when we finally got clear of the keep it was on fire. No Templars followed us.”  _ No _ , Dorian thought,  _ there probably weren’t any left with the stomach to. _ Evelyn was formidable without the mark, and had been at the outset. Continuous battle had only made her moreso. Unleashed and terrified for her life- for the lives of others- Dorian could only imagine.

“...When I got clear of my family home,” Dorian said, “there was a body count in my wake. Not by my hands, necessarily. Or not entirely, anyway. All the same.”

“Did you see them?” she asked, after a moment. Dorian nodded. They fell again to silence, strangely companionable given the weight of their thoughts, until the roar of Bull’s laughter from farther down the ramparts pulled Dorian’s attention. When he looked back, Evelyn was watching him with poorly disguised wryness.

“He’s insufferable,” Dorian said and her lips pulled into a rare grin.

“You seemed to be suffering him well enough.”

Dorian glowered.

“It’s not my business, unless it… distracts you, I suppose? Causes a rift of some kind. I don’t know, I hadn’t given much thought to policing my friends’ dalliances. Honestly,” she continued over Dorian’s attempt at an interjection, “it’s the best possible outcome I can think of after the months of sniping and pushing each other’s boundaries. I’m all for it.”

“There is no ‘it’,” Dorian lied, “and certainly no dalliance. There merely  _ was _ an- instance.”

“Oh, an _ instance _ ,” Evelyn echoed softly.

“Wholly separate and different from a dalliance,” Dorian insisted, doing a frantic mental tally of how much longer he’d have to try to sell that line.

“Save the last four letters,” Evelyn pointed out and Dorian sniffed to acknowledge the point was hers.

They walked together down from the tower toward the familiar sound of soldiers drinking. Not so many as to be cacophonous, but a handful of scouts and the Chargers, to be sure. From their place on the stairs, Dorian could make out Varric, Blackwall, Bull. He nearly didn’t notice Evelyn stopping.

“Forgive the intrusion,” Cullen said, approaching them from the landing of another rampart, looking, it seemed to Dorian, rather tense.

“Inquisitor, if you’ve a moment.”

Evelyn did some quick mental calculation, gaze flickering toward the firelight before she nodded and broke away from Dorian’s side.

“I have. Dorian,” she said, with a nod to him over her shoulder, which he returned.

“Of course,” he replied, and only hung back a moment longer to watch her match Cullen’s rigidity stride for stride as she took the lead in walking them away from the staircase.

Blackwall’s brief glance at Dorian, or the empty space to Dorian’s right, might have gone unnoticed had Dorian not been looking for it. The resulting shift in what expression could be discerned behind the beard seemed, Dorian thought, a touch sour.

“Sparkler!” Varric said expansively. “You’ve been missed!” 

“Obviously,” Dorian said, taking a seat nowhere near the Iron Bull but in a spot with an unobstructed view, beside Hawke, and accepting a tankard of something from Stitches, who tried to warn him about moderation while Dorian was still essentially in a state of recovery, and who was summarily shouted down by the rest of the party.

He did, however, manage to nurse his drink for longer than was his usual habit. The familiar banter was a balm, and if he dared to be honest with himself, he wanted to stave off sleep for a while yet. 

No one brought up the Fade.

At one point there was the faint sound of a sharp word being spoken, and Dorian twisted in his seat to catch sight of Evelyn disappearing into the shadows of the upper keep, doubtless to retire, and Cullen stepping out onto the landing to watch her go. The lines of his body and curl of his fists screamed  _ frustration _ . Dorian glanced surreptitiously toward Blackwall, who was doing the same to the resolving scene on the stairs. Cullen walked the opposite way and past them, looking stormy, and after he’d gone Hawke made a faint, rueful noise.

“Always so serious.”

“Curly’s got a lot on his plate,” Varric said.

“And I don’t?!” Hawke demanded, and they were off to the races again, chatter spooling up. Blackwall was the first to beg off, and the Chargers and scouts followed in ones and twos. Krem stood with Skinner after Dalish had tugged on both of their arms, and cast a brief, considering look over Dorian and Bull.

“...’night,” he said lamely, after clearly discarding several other aborted thoughts, and then Dorian and Bull were alone.

“Not tired?” Bull ventured.

“Exhausted nearly to the brink,” Dorian replied easily. 

“You should sleep. We head back tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Dorian agreed, quietly, turning his empty mug over in his hands. The sounds of the desert, and of a hundred soldiers breathing beneath old stones, created a sort of soft, white noise around them. Eventually, Dorian said, “Do you think Blackwall’s going to try to fight Cullen for the Inquisitor’s affections?”, and Bull snorted, but entertained the idle speculation for a while longer, until the night grew heavier and blurred around the edges.

Dorian awoke in his tent with the lurching unease of not knowing what of his memory was dream and what was true, but once the early sunlight and growing clamor had sunk in, he could at least discern that at some still hour the Iron Bull had walked Dorian to bed and bid him good night with nothing more than a lingering touch to the back of his neck.

The road back to Skyhold was long, but the company was exceptional, and no matter how many tears in the fabric of the world they encountered, Dorian never felt a whisper of the Nightmare’s presence, and dreamed only, if strangely, of being home and considerably younger. That didn’t spare them from stretches of tension, days riding when the Inquisitor seemed drawn and distant, or even Bull. Dorian watched him for any glimmer of the look he’d seen on Bull in the fade, finding himself still determined to know what it had been a sign of. Bull used his skills as a berserker to great effect and with no guilt whatsoever at regular intervals in their battles. There must have been something more, then, some deeper loss of control, to have cast such a shadow.

While he endeavored to give his friends time and space to wrestle with their own thoughts, Dorian certainly wasn’t about to pass up opportunities to goad Bull into something more like his regular humor. Their verbal sparring reached a point that had Cassandra abandoning the fireside with a noise of disgust and opting instead to take watch. Dorian felt a bit smug about that, truth be told, but forced himself to rein it in a bit, regardless.

The road back to Skyhold was a Maker forsaken  _ eternity _ given what Dorian was resolved to make happen- or allow to, given the warmth and focus of Bull’s interest- once they had arrived.

The fanfare was substantial, revelry threatening to override all but the most direly practical of tasks. Still, an army was filtering in, and the commotion was substantial. Cole was an ever present shadow at Dorian’s heels the moment he set foot past the ramparts, which rather set his teeth on edge, almost as much as the sudden influx of Orlesian merchants and messengers. Livius Erimond arrived with the rear guard and was summarily thrown into a cell to await judgement, Evelyn was walking around looking equal parts dazed and determined at any given moment, and Dorian was pleased to be well out of the planning, decision making, and training for a bit. He had spent two nights at the Rest with the Chargers, mostly trying to cheer Varric up in the wake of Hawke’s departure for Weisshaupt (a task that was actually achievable, this time, which Dorian was grateful for), and letting things smolder with Bull. They exchanged barbs with relish, the flirtation barely concealed, and Dorian suspected the Chargers were growing impatient with it. Dorian certainly was.  _ So why wait any longer? _ , he reasoned.  _ Damn your nerves. _

For it was a nervousness, of a kind Dorian had never felt before, that stopped him from accepting a final tankard of ale or flagon of wine, outlasting the most dedicated of the Herald’s Rest’s crowd, and letting their murmured conversation carry them upstairs. A stupid, unnecessary nervousness. Being astoundingly good in bed was a muscle memory the way using a staff was. Dorian had nothing to be nervous about.

And yet.

On their fourth day returned, Dorian caught Mother Giselle watching him with a tepid sort of concern from across the garden before scurrying off.  _ Andraste forbear _ , he thought unkindly, and continued the game of chess he had forced Cullen into. It was the first time he’d seen the man out of uniform and sitting down since before Adamant. 

They did not discuss the Inquisitor.

They did talk a tremendous amount of shit about Orlesians, however.

Pleased with the day and  _ more _ pleased with the prospect of the evening, Dorian retreated to the library. There were new caches of papers to go through, new tomes needing deciphering, and while he didn’t anticipate having much time to delve into them before the evening meal, he had been meaning to at least begin sorting them in order of importance. Naturally, this left him seated in his nook and pouring over a volume that was offensively inaccurate with regard to Elven traditions as perpetuated by the Dalish, but incredibly revealing about certain historical blood feuds in Orlais and the Marches, when Evelyn found him.

“Do you know, I think there may actually be something in here that’s useful? Not to me, of course, but Josephine will have a fit. Evelyn,” Dorian said, taking in the Inquisitor’s expression and posture, noting how uncomfortable she was, how agitated.

What month was it? What came between Adamant and Halamshiral? He had gone on relatively few missions at the time, had been blessedly left out of the mess in the Exalted Plains. Was it Erimond? They hadn’t had much discussion over what ought to be done with the man, but if he was entirely honest about it, Dorian didn’t have particularly strong feelings on the matter. Livius had always been a conniving, useless bastard. Dorian anticipated he would remain so until death, regardless of when that death came for him.

“May I be of some service?”

“Dorian,” she began, hesitating only to retrieve something from the fold of her jacket. “There’s a letter you must see.”

_ Not the Qun _ , he thought distantly, frowning and setting his book aside,  _ not now _ .

“Is it a fun letter?”

“It’s from your family,” she said, and he stared at her blankly. “Your father.”

_ Oh, yes, _ he thought.  _ That. _

“...no, then,” he said. He stood and accepted the parchment from her hand. Of all the damnable things to forget to see coming.

He barely skimmed the words, written in a familiar hand, knowing what they said well enough. He’d agonized over it the first time he’d received it, examined the tilt of every loop, the placement of every comma, to extract some additional meaning from the words. Some genuine regret.

“‘I know my son’,” he muttered. “The arrogance. What my father knows about me could barely fill a thimble. This is so-”

The words caught in his mouth, disorienting in their familiarity. The way his voice echoed off the stone columns of the tower, the memory of his words seemed to resound in his own head as he spoke them.

“...so?” Evelyn prodded.

“Typical,” Dorian bit out, with a brief shake of his head. The surprise was rather spoiled, he thought, knowing ahead of time that his father had deigned to grace so lowly a destination as Fereldan with his presence, and all to convince Dorian to abandon his cause and return home to keep up the family charade. It would be a long journey for a short, vicious exchange. It wasn’t worth it.

“And retainer is certainly a euphemism of some kind, possibly for ‘hired thug to bring you home willingly or not’. Inquisitor, this would be a waste of resources and time.”

Evelyn gave a considering nod, but the wheels turning behind her eyes told Dorian she wasn’t done with the matter.

“You’re not on good terms with your family. I can’t profess to understand exactly why. But perhaps… this is an opportunity. You could talk to this man, give him a message to deliver. Make clear your stance. And if I were with you, he would certainly report that back, yes? That the Inquisitor herself- however blasphemous I must seem to the Northern Chantry- asserted your value to her cause and was unwilling to lose you from her service?”

A smile tugged at one corner of her mouth.

“Might piss him off a bit.”

“You’re spending too much time with Sera,” Dorian murmured reflexively. He felt the letter creasing under his grip, and shoved it unceremoniously into a pocket of his robe.

“I’ll consider it.”

“Do,” Evelyn told him. “I could do with a diversion to Redcliffe, besides. It would be a waste of neither my time nor our resources. Truthfully.”

“Very well. I’ll give you my final thoughts in the morning.”

It would at least give him a night to drink on it. He missed the dinner bell, too busy fiddling with the broken oud and mulling over the details of the meeting as it had happened, allowing himself the rare indulgence of fantasizing about the other ways it might have gone. What was left unsaid.

Perhaps it bore more thought than he had considered.

 

The Herald’s Rest was not, on that particular evening, especially boisterous. Sera alone could generate the bedlam of a full contingent of circus performers, but she seemed happy enough to sit cross-legged on the table and trade lewd stories with Rocky. The conversation flowed apace with the ale or mead or whatever it was coming from the next cask to be opened, and Dorian let it envelope him. He sat to Bull’s right, leaned back in his seat, and only realized he had been years and miles away in his own mind when Bull purposefully shifted his leg to press against Dorian’s under the table.

“Still with us?” Bull rumbled, voice carrying just under the pitch of the rest of the din. Dorian tilted his head back to look at him, allowing himself a long moment to do so. In fact, he didn’t bother looking away. 

“I think so, yes,” Dorian replied. “It can be difficult to tell, in moments.”

“This something that can be fixed with another round?”

“Well it certainly can’t hurt to  _ try _ ,” Dorian said. “I’m not about to ask anyone to beat me with a stick, at any rate.”

“Hey,” Bull said as he stood, pointing at Dorian, “it works for me.” Dorian made a show of rolling his eyes.

They each drank their final tankard of ale slowly, refusing additional rounds even as the others indulged. They laughed with their friends, bidding each a questionably worded good night as they peeled off, one after the next, to retire. Near the end it was only Krem and Grim listening to Maryden, and Cabot behind the bar, and Dorian and Bull at the corner of their table, legs still resting comfortably against each other beneath. Their conversation meandered and lulled, took a brief diversion into arguing over the quality of street food in different provinces and cities, and after one of several verbal detents had been reached, Dorian finished the dregs in his cup and set it decisively down on the table. Bull watched him as he did.

“Shall we continue this discussion upstairs?” Dorian asked, rising from the table and stepping away from it before turning a faint, challenging smile on Bull. He’d done well to take his time, as Bull now took his, looking Dorian over slowly in the muted light, occasionally lingering on some detail or other long enough to make Dorian want to squirm.

Not that he would  _ ever _ .

At least not until they were behind closed doors.

“Yeah,” Bull said at last, “let’s.” 

He stood as Dorian started walking, and the weight of his presence at Dorian’s back as they ascended each wooden flight did nothing to make the moment feel more real. Which was, Dorian decided, as they arrived at Bull’s door, crowded close enough that Bull’s breath gusted across the back of Dorian’s neck as he reached to open it for them, no reason at all to let the moment pass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will come a day when I run out of lyrics from this one Coldplay song to use for chapter titles but today is not that day.
> 
> Sorry this took a literal year to post???? Sorry???? Sorry sorry. If you read it, thank you thank you. Please swing by my tumblr (doozer-doodles, with a dash!) especially if you're a stucky/stony fan cuz I wrote a thing you might like and the deets are there. Uuuh. I still love Dorian and Bull and I'm still gonna keep writing this sucker! And I am super duper gonna try to not take a year this time! To post again! So!
> 
> Okay!

**Author's Note:**

> This series is the first fanfiction I've published online since I was but wee, so all feedback is strongly encouraged and greatly appreciated.


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